


Assembling

by Jaune_Chat



Series: Worthy 'Verse [4]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Angst, Different Powers, Friendship, Gen, Getting to Know Each Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-28
Updated: 2017-07-22
Packaged: 2017-12-16 11:20:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 28,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/861415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaune_Chat/pseuds/Jaune_Chat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Avengers Initiative is assembling:  The Thunderer - Tony Stark, Iron Man - Thor Odinsson, Captain America - Natasha Romanov, and The Black Widow(er) - Steve Rogers are being thrown together to go after one Clint Barton, who can become a rage monster known as the Hulk, and his bow-wielding protector, the radiation scientist Dr. Bruce Banner.  Together these six people might just be able to save themselves and the world they've taken by storm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to **brighteyed_jill** for betaing!
> 
>  **Art:** Amazing art by **ensign-c** (Also on Tumblr [here](http://ensign-cannonfodder.tumblr.com/)) can be found [here](http://ensign-c.livejournal.com/2076.html).

“Stark is just going to let us in?” Natasha asked. “That seems too easy, particularly after what he went through… or at least what we know of it.”

“He doesn’t know me, but he’ll know my credentials. Nathan Rushman, from the legal department.” Rogers walked out from behind the dressing screen, now an inoffensive office worker instead of a deadly spy. From having done plenty of camouflage dressing in her day, she realized his clothes were just slightly oversized, tailored just a little bit wrong, enough to disguise his muscled physique. Put a guileless expression on his face and you could believe he’d never hurt a fly. With practiced motions, Rogers swallowed some pills from a tiny box and gave himself two injections before rolling his sleeves over his muscled arms.

“I’ve maintained an identity at Stark Industries for a while,” he explained.

“You maintain a lot,” Natasha countered. SHIELD would have had to, particularly if Stark hadn’t known about the spy organization. Having Howard Stark’s son running around with no one keeping tabs on him would have been a recipe for disaster. Though Natasha was certain their coverage had increased exponentially since Tony’s capture and escape. “I think I could play your assistant if you needed me out of uniform. Stark’s son might know of me, but probably doesn’t know my face. There weren’t supposed to be any shots of me with my cowl off and I know a lot of Dr. Erskine’s files were destroyed – the ones about the test group anyway. If I don’t give him my real name…”

Rogers stared at her, honestly surprised. “I’m sorry, what? Did you just offer to be spy buddies?”

“They wouldn’t let me fight, Agent Rogers. I learned how to pass for a secretary to keep up on the news between dancing around in the chorus line,” she said matter-of-factly, the old pain from that well-hidden.

Rogers’ expression darkened. “That’s criminal.”

“That’s how it worked. Colonel Phillips came around after I went after the 107th, and Howard wasn’t afraid of admitting I could be useful, but to everyone else I was an expensive embarrassment, and they made me pay for it.”

“I’m really, really glad those guys aren’t around anymore,” he said, his fingers clenching, like he’d rather have them wrapped around a throat.

Natasha sighed. “One upshot to losing my time, I guess. Do you want me along?”

“Hey,” Steve said softly. “Stark is about the only one left that knew anything about you; there’s no way I’d leave you out. No, come as you are – you do whatever you need to do. It’ll keep the focus off of me if I need to try anything. If Stark’s half as fond of bragging as he seems to be-.”

Natasha smiled outright. “Howard was only too happy to tell you how he was leading contender for the world’s greatest everything.”

“Then you get anything out of him that he’ll talk about while I poke around. Something happened to Stark when he was captured in the desert; he came out different. Like… _you_ different.”

“I read about how he stopped making weapons…”

“Because he doesn’t _need_ them now. He _is_ a weapon, him and that hammer of his. Then he went and built that powered armor for his guest, who SHIELD has _no_ files on at all.” And that rankled, that was clear from the look on Rogers’ face. It was an expression Natasha knew very well.

“Agent Carter hated not having information either.”

“I don’t want to dictate what you want to talk about to Stark, but if he lets you know something, anything…”

“I’ll do what I can… Rogers, he might not even want to see me. He might not even know about me. I know Howard was supposed to keep me top secret, and he died when Tony was so young…” Natasha trailed off, seeing the article about Howard’s death in the packet they’d given her, and successfully repressed a hard lump of emotion. She’d already cried for him.

“Everyone likes you,” Rogers said, startling her out of her melancholy. He plucked a pair of glasses from a case on the table and settled them on his nose, subsuming himself further into his “Nathan Rushman” role. “You’re the kind of person people trust on sight. Even me, and I’m known as one of SHIELD’s most suspicious agents.”

Natasha suspected some of that was flattery, but there was a definite hint of sincerity in Rogers’ voice. With Director Hill being such a big fan, some of that must have rubbed off on her agents.

“I hope so. I want to meet Tony, but we all saw Barton and Banner’s video. We need Tony and his friend. Even if he doesn’t need us.” _Even if he doesn’t want to talk to me,_ she added silently.

Rogers picked up a briefcase and spent some time arranging files in it. “You’re more cynical than I thought you would be.”

“I might have made the world more equal after I… went down, but I didn’t reap many benefits in my own time,” Natasha reminded him, her voice a little flat with old anger.

“Ah.” A wealth of understanding colored his tone.

“I’ll tell Tony the truth about me. Maybe that will give him an opening to talk about what happened to him.”

Rogers smiled. He might be a spy, a master of lies, but here was someone who knew how truth could be used just as effectively.

\--

There were some things Tony had rediscovered since Mjölnir and Thor had come into his life. Some Earth (or Asgard)-shattering, some simple pleasures. Like answering his own door. It wasn’t like he could be easily hurt now, and he did have cameras outside and guards at the grounds entrance to keep paparazzi and crazed fans away. If anyone was truly bent on hurting him, they probably wouldn’t be using the front door anyway. Besides, it let Pepper off the hook for doing something so mundane and let her spend more time kicking ass and taking names at headquarters.

Which made it a fun surprise to find a beautiful redhead and an equally attractive blond on his doorstep. The blond silently screamed “accountant!” while the redhead was wearing an army uniform that was a short step from being painted on, it was so well-tailored. Even if they just stood there for the rest of the afternoon, Tony would have considered it a worthy interruption of his time.”

“Mr. Stark? Nathan Rushman from Legal. Ah, we had something, or rather, some _one_ rather unusual turn up in conjunction with some of your father’s patents, and we needed your signature on a couple of forms, sir.”

Tony waved them inside, briefly enjoying the view from behind (Rushman might have been trying to hide it, but there was definitely something excellent under his ill-cut clothes. Tony resolved to sic his tailor on him later). 

“Which patents?” he asked, stalling for time as the redhead looked around the modern décor with brief, intense interest before focusing on him. Or rather, on his biceps. Which Tony was totally not exactly hiding with the tank top he was sporting. What? He’d been _forging_ , he could legitimately be without sleeves when he was forging!

“The ones associated with the army in the 1940s.” Nathan opened up his briefcase to pull out some files. 

Tony’s eyes snapped to the redhead. No way. There was only one possible thing that could mean. He’d heard Dad’s description of Captain America countless times, and since no picture of her in uniform remained, it took imagination to see her real face as a warrior in the few USO tour photos that had survived. The fixed smile she wore there was nothing like the small, genuine smile she wore now. Not tentative, but guarded. A little cynical. America’s biggest hero, celebrated through gritted teeth. They hadn’t even used her real _name_ , for crying out loud. They’d called her “Nancy Roberts” when they’d referred to her at all. They’d like to have pretended she was just a figurehead to rally the troops around, instead of the hard-fighting example always out in front.

Tony understood why she’d done that a lot better now. He grinned right back at her, unshadowed and open.

“Captain Romanov!” A lot of the cynical expression melted away. And speaking of… “How did you…?”

“I froze. I thawed,” she said shortly.

“Okay, I refuse to let you leave me hanging like that. Come here.” Tony held out his hand and Romanov clasped it. She was strong, very strong, muscles showing themselves unexpectedly in her arm as she quietly tested his mettle, eyes widening as he traded her grip for grip.

“You look so much like Howard,” Romanov said. “Minus the muscle, I think.” She grimaced slightly as Tony’s clasp reached past what she could endure, and he let go, very impressed she could take as much as she had.

“Yeah, so they say,” Tony said, looking her over with wonder. “Come on, get in here.” He waved them both into the living room, collapsing on a sofa so he could stare at her. “How?” he said, pointing a finger at her.

“Ah, Mr. Stark, I’ll just finish prepping the paperwork,” Rushman said nervously, and Tony waved in dismissal. Legal vanished back into the foyer and Tony promptly forgot about him as he turned his attention back to Romanov.

“You first,” she said, raising an eyebrow. 

“I asked _you_ first,” Tony said stubbornly. They had come to _his_ door, so he was invoking host’s privilege.

Natasha looked past his shoulder as she spoke, her voice going soft. “When the plane went down, the serum didn’t let me die. I was frozen instead. Suspended animation, or that’s what the scientists tell me. Some explorers found the wreck in Greenland. Pulled me out.” Her skin pebbled, and Tony didn’t think it was from the AC. “I was still alive. The army caught wind of it and had their people take over. When I finally came to… I was seventy years out of my time.”

She looked like she was repressing a shiver, and Tony nodded over at his bar. “Can I get you anything?”

“Doesn’t work on me. Sorry,” she said sadly. “I’ll take anything else you have without ice, though.”

Tony grabbed her a Coke, staring down at her pensively as she drank, keeping her eyes locked on him.

“I know you,” he said. “Sort of. Dad talked about you all the time. The political types destroyed all your pictures, but people still figured it out. After you went down, Dad, Phillips, Peggy Carter, all the Howling Commandos, they made damn sure you wouldn’t be forgotten.”

“I owe them all flowers,” she said evenly, and Tony sat down next to her on the couch a respectful distance away, feeling sort of like an ass. “What happened to you? From everything I read in the newspapers they gave me, I nearly lost you before I woke up. How did you…?” she gestured at his physique.

Tony hesitated a long time. She had been Dad’s friend, and though she’d been pretty calm so far, there had to be one or fifty things in his background that had the potential for this to get awkward very quickly even before he started talking. “I was kinda thinking you might be mad at me.”

“For not building weapons anymore?” Natasha snorted and stood up. “Why would I be mad at you? Why would I be mad that you replaced risking thousands of soldiers’ lives with just risking your own?”

Tony chuffed out a laugh at her ironic look. “When you put it that way…”

“She understands us, my friend.”

Tony jumped a mile as Thor spoke up from behind him. Dear God (or gods) he needed to get that man a bell.

“Thor Odinsson, Natasha Romanov, and would you _say something_ next time? You nearly gave me a damn heart attack!”

Thor seemed unconcerned for Tony’s level of cardiac health. “Jarvis told me who had arrived. This is the one your own father spoke of, the champion of your nation?”

Natasha smiled at that, and crossed over to clasp Thor’s hand. Despite no longer being Asgardian, Thor had muscle power to spare, and _he_ was the first one to wince at Natasha’s grip. But that only seemed to delight him.

“You are indeed she,” he said, bowing. “And you do understand us. This world has begun to have enemies far stronger than what can be defeated with armies. Ruthless criminals walk free, cloaking their hatred in a hundred different justifications, and they bear no love for the conventions of war. Indeed, why let a thousand men perish in useless battle when two-,” he nodded at her, “or three champions may set the matter straight?”

“You’re the one with the armor.”

“I helped sculpt its form, and Tony breathed life into it. The armor gives me the strength to take on the kinds of foes I know how to fight. And you are the one who took the alchemist’s potion to make you a paragon?”

Natasha nodded, looking back and forth rapidly between Thor and Tony, probably picking up the similarities in their physique. And if she had even a rudimentary background in folklore and mythology, things were going to fall into place real fast.

Screw it. He’d been dying to tell someone anyway.

Tony stood decisively and reached out his hand, calling Mjölnir.

\--

Steve activated a scrambler the moment he was alone, knowing Stark’s AI was entirely too clever for its own good, and if he didn’t want it alerting Stark every time he bypassed a door, he had to make himself electronically invisible. Leaving the papers on the table for cover, Steve slipped out of the foyer and down the stairs as Stark and Romanov talked. At strategic intervals he pressed tiny recording devices into inconspicuous crannies. No, it was not polite, but Steve hadn’t joined SHIELD with the intention of being polite. When people with the kind of damage potential that Tony Stark and his houseguest had began going off the reservation, they really had to expect that _someone_ was going to try to keep an eye on them. 

If Romanov wasn’t successful in getting Stark to talk, if he wouldn’t come into SHIELD, then they needed that eye and needed it yesterday. Together those two were an army all on their own.

Steve slipped inside an alcove when the tall, blond, muscle-bound Thor strode past him from the direction of the workshop, avoiding his gaze before pressing onward, and paused again when he saw that damned hammer sitting just outside of the workshop door. Feeling a little bit foolish, but unable to deny the impulse, Steve wrapped his hand around the handle and pulled.

It might as well have been a load-bearing wall for all he was able to move it.

Maybe the rumors some of the other analysts had been floating were true; those semi-crazy ones about the hammer being from another world.

Right then the hammer moved on its own, flying up the stairs.

Heart pounding, Steve ran up the stairs and halted himself in the doorway of the living room, deactivating his scrambler, doing his very best impression of a scared guy from Legal who’d just seen something incomprehensible.

It was by far the easiest acting job he’d ever done.

Natasha’s eyes were wide as Tony held the impossible hammer in one hand, talking in terms that would have made the semi-crazy analysts high-five each other in self-congratulatory glee.

“Another world?” Natasha was saying, reaching out tentatively to touch the hammer. Steve held back words of caution with an iron will.

“Asgard. My world. Mjölnir found Tony worthy of his own merit, and he has been aiding me in regaining my honor here on Midgard.”

“You would have done just fine without me,” Tony said. “Believe me.”

“But I would not have had such fine armor if I had!” Thor said, his smile broad and full of light. “Aye, we now aid each other in combating cruelty.”

Natasha closed her hand around the hammer’s handle and looked up at the two men, eyes flicking back and forth like she was evaluating them for lies. 

“That’s what happened,” Tony said, his hands bracketing Natasha’s on Mjölnir’s handle. “I made my choice in that cave.”

“And mine when I saw him with Mjölnir.”

“And mine when everyone told me no,” Natasha said, releasing the hammer.

Steve smiled with a bitter twist to his lips. He understood her reasoning all too well.

“Did you come to join us?” Thor asked curiously.

“Other way around. There’s someone… someone out there who’s either going to need our help, or something else. Someone only we could handle. And I don’t think it would be wise for me to go alone.” She paused, and Tony put the hammer down, spreading his hands and gesturing for her to bring it on. Then held up one hand.

“Hey Legal!” he called. Steve popped his head in the room and gave Stark rigid composure over terror. “Leave those forms on the table and take the rest of the day off. If Pepper complains, have her call me. Ciao!”

Steve turned and left, tapping his earbud to listen in on the conversation.

“His name’s Clint Barton, and he had this lab accident…”

Privately, Steve smiled. Things were finally starting to come together.

\--

_One Month Later_

Steve’s gaze never wavered from the small, secluded house at the edge of the woods, and he kept himself carefully still. He knew from experience that Banner had exceptionally keen eyesight for a man who occasionally wore glasses, and did not relish having to track him and Barton down, again, if he did the slightest thing to make either of them nervous before he knocked on their door.

 _“Steve?”_ Natasha’s voice sounded over his earbud.

“We’re five-by-five. We’re not going to get a better chance than today,” he responded very softly.

_“Tony and Thor are going to be upset when they figure out we were lying all this time.”_

“Tony and Thor are too intimidating and you’re too associated with the army for them to believe you at first. Let me try the soft sell before you get here.”

_“Steve… be careful. We’ll be watching. If he gets angry… at least we might be able to stop him before he hurts anyone.”_

He tapped twice on the earbud in acknowledgement. And then started his descent into the valley openly. It was time to bring the team together.


	2. Chapter 2

Steve could only hope that after months of observation from SHIELD they had a better handle on what really made Bruce Banner and Clint Barton tick. SHIELD had needed Stark and Thor and Romanov in case of an incident when they tried to make contact. But from everything he had observed, an incident would be the very last resort. 

Banner and Barton didn’t believe in wanton war and destruction any more than Stark, Thor, or Romanov. The danger they represented was one of teasing a sleeping bear – everything was fine until you started jabbing it with a stick.

How General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross managed to keep his position when he had wasted an untold amount of money, manpower, and lives on trying to recapture Barton and Banner over the past three years was something of a mystery. Steve had theories that he held blackmail material over quite a few powerful people, otherwise how could he have hounded the two this long? His efforts had driven them to Saskatchewan to hide, and nothing was going to make them break cover unless they were forced. They had absolutely no interest in letting Barton be turned over to the US Army, or indeed any army, and Ross should have been thanking his lucky stars that Barton was keeping his head down.

On the one hand, Steve could see a few coldly practical reasons why Ross was still pursuing Barton and Banner. For one, Barton could be an unparalleled weapon in unpredictable terrain, provided he ever got himself under control. What now took dozens of soldiers and thousands, sometimes millions of dollars’ worth of equipment could be taken care of by a single Hulk. But they’d never know if they never got Barton and Banner back. For another, the US couldn’t afford to let any other country capture the two men. Letting them run free wasn’t an option, because there wasn’t an asset that existed that someone wouldn’t try to exploit. 

On the other hand, what had happened to Barton was a tragic accident, and him, Banner, and Ross’ daughter had been screwed over repeatedly and with malicious intent to create the Hulk. Barton had signed up to be a volunteer soldier, not a monster, not to have his freedom deprived from him on a whim, not to be used as one-man army to slaughter anyone who was unfortunate to be in his way when his captors decided to loose him. Banner and Dr. Ross had been trying to help soldiers stay safe in the field, not turn them into living weapons. 

Staying hidden for the rest of their lives wouldn’t work. There was no place they could go where they couldn’t eventually be found. Curing Barton could be difficult or impossible, and even if it worked, or even especially if it worked, no one would let any of them alone until they’d managed to repeat the experiment. Banner and Barton were going to have to make a choice, and SHIELD was probably the safest one. They were used to dealing with corner cases, with unusual decisions, out-of-the-box thinking, and unorthodox solutions. With SHIELD as their shield, Barton and Banner might be able to have some semblance of a life, which they wouldn’t get anywhere else.

Besides, Steve could understand how someone would want to change themselves for the better. So could Natasha, Stark, and Thor. That was the whole point of this operation; it was a job offer. It was a chance to show them they could do some good and not have to hide.

The trick was they had to make that offer very, very carefully so they didn’t spook.

Steve traipsed down the mountain at an immoderate pace, letting twigs snag at his too-new name-brand outdoor clothes and get caught on his bulky, overloaded backpack. At the forced flailing pace, he grew sweaty and dirty in no time, looking for all the world like an inexperienced city boy trying the Great Outdoors with whatever he’d picked out of an Eddie Bauer catalogue. He pressed himself over his limits so that when he deliberately thrashed out of the trees his throat was starting to close in an impending asthma attack. He stumbled to a stop in clear view of the cabin and rummaged in a frantic fashion through the ridiculous amounts of pockets in his vest until he “found” his inhaler. Instead of quietly taking a few hits so subtly you’d never notice he’d even been gasping, he played up the attack (not to the point of looking faint, just more civilian) and “spied” the cabin with a look of pure relief. After a brief rest, he marched straight for it, openly.

“Hello?” he called. “Anyone home?” The curtain moved, but no enormous green rage monsters emerged, nor did an arrow fly out to skewer him. Good. The two men hadn’t become completely paranoid yet.

\--

“Who the hell is that?” Tony said, squinting through his binoculars. He hit the power switch on the side to increase the magnification. “Got a hiker that just came out of the woods.”

“Let’s wait. I don’t want to crowd them,” Natasha said, peering over Stark’s shoulder from their vantage point partway up the valley.

“He looks like Preppy McFrappe from Yuppyville,” Tony announced decisively, and derisively. Thor and Natasha looked at each other in bewilderment. Even ignoring technical jargon, half the time they didn’t know what Tony was talking about. Tony looked over at them and sighed. “He looks like a city guy who’s only ever seen camping supplies in a store. No experience. How the hell did he get out here alone?”

“Boneheadedness?” Natasha suggested, and Tony smiled.

“Maybe. Maybe not. He does anything hinky, it’s going to be hammer time, just saying,” Tony said, and continued watching.

Natasha felt little prickles of unease at the unspoken lie. It was too far to make out Steve’s features even through the binoculars, not past the turtleneck sweater, coat, and hat, and she hadn’t said a word about knowing the mysterious hiker. She was growing to like Tony and Thor, and having to keep her mouth shut about SHIELD in general and Steve in particular was beginning to wear. Not that she hadn’t kept as many secrets during the war for the same gravity of reasons. Working for the army was one thing – a spy organization, something else.

There was more freedom in working for SSR- or rather, SHIELD- than there ever would have been in the regular army. The army had never really had plans for people like Natasha; witness what they had tried to do to Barton! Stark hadn’t contradicted her explanation for working for the new SSR, which was, strictly speaking, true. Or that they had asked her to find people to talk to Barton that could handle him if he reacted badly. She just hadn’t mentioned SHIELD’s scope and budget had gone astronomical in the seventy years since she’d known them. She didn’t mention they were being watched as much as Barton and Banner. 

But she also didn’t assume Stark or Thor was stupid. They had to know _someone_ would be watching them. At their level power, a certain amount of danger could be shrugged off. No subtle, clandestine attempts to hurt them could succeed, which left betrayal or all-out assault. They hadn’t let Natasha into their confidence enough for the former and anyone who had ever seen the two of them in action would think very hard about initiating the latter. In short, they might know or guess that Natasha had been more secretive than she was telling and didn’t care, or cared enough to wait for her to say for herself.

Natasha sighed mentally. She enjoyed the two men’s company – Thor had the manners of a prince and though Tony might look, he did not leer, and accorded her the respect of soldier without seeming to have to try. It was a nice change, and in the past month she’d gotten to know them, she almost felt like she had friends again.

She could only hope revealing the Black Widow wouldn’t be a setback for them. They needed him; he was stealthy and subtle, something they rest of them were not. He was hard and practical, with few illusions. And he could smooth the way for their own peculiarities as easily as breathing. Tony was brash and loud, Thor a monument to an alien world, and Natasha was a living historical icon. They needed a man in their corner, a silent partner, a bridge, an interpreter.

Someone to look out for the freaks of the world. 

“Aaaand he’s taking a hit off of his inhaler. Least, I think it’s an inhaler, unless it’s a teeny tiny bong, which I would totally not put past Mr. Yuppie. If he legitimately got lost this far out that would completely make sense… Nope, no smoke, regular inhaler.”

“I would dare a closer look, but I believe they would hear me,” Thor said with a sigh, pressing his eyes to his own binoculars.

Down in the valley, Steve smiled and waved as the door opened. The person inside didn’t seem to want to come out, but there was just enough light spilling into to see a faint reflection off eyeglasses.

“That’s the good doctor,” Natasha said quietly.

“Bad news for us. His houseguest could be anywhere,” Tony said.

“You do not believe they are both inside?” Thor asked.

“Banner’s more vulnerable. Why answer the door unless he had to? Barton’s face isn’t on the news.”

All of them must have missed Barton’s departure, both Steve at his own post, and them at theirs, had all managed to let him slip by. Natasha cursed inwardly and knew that down in the valley Steve had to be doing the same. The initial plan had Steve making contact, confirming the two men’s identities and getting their attention, and then Natasha would lead the others in after Steve left. Armed with more information, they could approach with open hands and know any sore spots to avoid. The last thing she wanted to do was go in cold if she didn’t have to.

“Good reasoning- _hsst_ ,” Natasha said, catching a hint of movement off to the side. All three turned as a sandy-haired man with a rifle in his arms just barely came into view. Barton. Natasha thanked her lucky stars that she’d been able to convince Thor to keep the suit in its case and wore her own armor and vibranium bracers under regular clothes. They were here first and foremost to talk. Fighting was the last thing they wanted to do, even if they were so very remote up here. The presence of a “civilian” at the cabin should help motivate everyone to keep their tempers.

\--

Barton easily cradled the rifle he’d picked up earlier from the cabin. Though a far cry from the kinds of weapons he’d used in the army, the old hunting rifle was nevertheless a good companion. Reliable, not hard to clean, the hunters up here swore by them. Minimal practice had let him take his share of rabbits and game birds, along with the occasional deer in the six months they’d been up here. A little bargaining in the nearest town, and they were reasonably self-sufficient. It was a quiet life, a good one, and no one had found them until now.

But it was still a life dominated by the giant green rage monster in the room. Clint had had no trouble seeing the wisdom in getting a solid handle on his condition before trying to sneak into the kinds of labs Bruce needed to try to cure him. And they still had Betty on their side, who took the samples Bruce smuggled to her and did everything she could. She’d been able to suggest a few things to avoid, chemicals, some foods, anything that exacerbated Clint’s control and put stress on the Hulk; that had kept things from getting worse. But the rest was in his hands alone.

He’d heard the jokes that snipers were the loneliest guys in their units, and by and large that had been true in the field. Just him and his calculator, or maybe a spotter, for hours or even days on end. But at the end of that time he still got to go home. He could meet his unit at the bar and have a beer, head out for a game or a concert, maybe find someone who wanted to have a mutual good time. He could go back to his apartment and watch a show, listening to the downstairs guy’s choice of heavy metal and smelling the killer barbecue from the family in 304. He could help the super hang the Christmas lights in the winter, swinging himself up onto the roof, or lob baseballs off the balcony for the kids below in the summer…

You never really realized how much a loner you weren’t until you were truly forced to go at it alone. Not that Bruce was bad company, not at all. He was intelligent and had a dry sense of humor that struck chords with Clint’s own, and they could, and had, talked marksmanship all day. But both of them were laboring under a mountain of guilt and seething with anger at Ross’ betrayal. It meant silences could be anywhere from awkward to unbearable. Hence why Clint spent so much time out of doors. It kept both of them from rubbing their emotions raw.

They’d chosen this place for its seclusion, and to have it broken by three others… no, four; Clint spied another stranger at the cabin door and his heart skipped a beat. The Hulk growled in his mind, alert at the danger sense that prickled at his neck. _Not yet. No danger yet you big, dumb dope._ The Hulk continued to grumble, but stayed back, for now. As long as he could keep his adrenaline from spiking, that seemed to help keep the Other Guy down.

There were two well-built men and a slightly shorter woman in front of him, all three dressed for a long hike and carrying what looked like camping equipment. The man near the cabin looked to be the same. The three people in the clearing looked harmless enough, but Clint couldn’t afford to be that careless, not now. He raised the rifle a little and put on his sternest voice.

\--

“This is private property,” Barton said flatly. 

“Didn’t see a sign, Lone Ranger,” Tony said, crossing his arms. Natasha privately thought Tony could have looked more worried – Barton was unarmed, they were ostensibly not, and the loners up here had plenty of land to bury a body.

“There were no marks of ownership anywhere, and we walked quite far,” Thor said. He hefted his binoculars and added, “We were watching birds.”

Natasha somehow managed not to choke as Thor pulled out a Birder’s Guide to Saskatchewan. Tony also valiantly did not whip around to stare at Thor like he was crazy. As a matter of fact, after two heartbeats, he joined in the insanity.

“He’s been on this kick for months. What were you talking about this time, the red-breasted titmouse?”

“The Northern Hawk Owl, which you well know as you were grousing about it not an hour prior.”

“Birds, grousing, ha ha,” Tony said, rolling his eyes.

“Theo, Anthony, if he doesn’t shoot you, I’m going to start throwing rocks.” Natasha might not have had any ambitions to go to the stage as a child, but she’d learned how to play a role very early on, and after the serum she’d gotten very good at improvising when she’d snuck into officers’ meetings. She didn’t know where Thor had gotten his idea (or, for that matter, the book) but she would run with it for a touchdown if Barton let her. She hoped the others didn’t mind a name change, but “Thor” was too distinctive and if she said “Tony” outright, Barton might look past the flannel shirt and hat to see Tony Stark.

They needed to ease Barton into the idea of meeting people who were different, not drop everything on him at once. That could end up being… messy. They hadn’t wanted to be spotted at all, so there’d be less lies to untangle later, but suddenly revealing there were three super-powered people in Barton’s backyard when he was armed, alone, and on high alert would be even worse.

Natasha just looked up at Barton and tried to look long-suffering, a good friend dragged out to do something she had no real interest in. Barton took a long, slow look around and lost some of his wariness. Not all of it by a long shot, but some.

“Further west,” he said brusquely. “Valley that way.”

“That your place?” Tony asked, waving at the cabin. 

“Why?”

“’Cause I would totally love to sit on something that isn’t a rock or a log or end up with more pine needles in my food than actual food.”

“You dropped it in the fire. That was your fault,” Natasha said, with a little smile for remembering the night Dum-Dum had done the same, and then just ate it with a shrug, ignoring Gabriel’s gagging sounds.

“It was my food and I’ll whine if I want to. Anyway, could we trade you some chocolate for renting a chair and table for an hour?” Tony said plaintively. 

“Sorry, no. Looks like we already have company.” Barton jerked his chin over to the cabin just below. “We really don’t do visitors.”

“It’s really awesome chocolate,” Tony said with a sigh of resignation, getting up to leave. Thor stood too, the heavy pack he was wearing making his muscle obvious even through his sweater and coat. Even for Natasha’s unusual strength the Iron Man suit was heavy, yet Thor could and would bear it, unpowered, without complaint. The wide, reinforced straps caught Barton’s eyes, and Natasha took advantage of the distraction to kick some debris over Mjölnir. Tony’s mystical hammer was damned inconvenient in that Tony was the only one who could pick it up. He couldn’t carry it around in a bag or leave it dangling from his belt, he had to hold it in his hand. And picking up a giant sledgehammer that made your hair stand on end if you got too close and carting it away in front of Barton wouldn’t look good for establishing peaceful intentions. At least it could fly back to Tony once Barton had cleared the area.

“Came up here for quiet, not for chocolate,” Barton said.

“Yeah, yeah, not the droids you’re looking for, move along,” Tony said. Barton stiffened, and even though Natasha hadn’t a clue what Tony was referencing, it clearly meant something to Barton. Tony, not being stupid, just shouldered his pack and walked away, looking grumpy. Thor headed off next with a smile and a murmured thanks about the location of the hawk owl. Natasha was the last to leave, and took her path close enough to Barton so she could offer a Hershey bar. It had been the little things that had kept her guys in good spirits when they were so far from home, and from what they knew of Barton’s background, he was very, very far from home.

Barton took the chocolate quickly, returning his hand to the gun stock. “West,” he said again, nodding where Tony and Thor had gone.

“I’m Natasha,” she said, waving good-bye. 

“Francis,” he said reluctantly.

His middle name. Well, since over the half the people in this scenario were using aliases anyway…

“It’s just nice to know there’s someone around up here,” she said cheerfully, and took her leave. Barton muttered a response so quietly that if Natasha’s ears hadn't been so keen, she would have never heard it.

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

She wanted to turn back, wanted to tell him he wasn’t alone. All she could do was smile at him, smile and maybe make him realize that not every stranger was out to hurt him. Maybe he’d be able to remember that. She just hoped that Steve was having better luck.

\--

Steve could nearly hear whoever was on the other side weighing his options. The door finally opened a crack after a lengthy pause. 

“Hey there,” Steve said, warmly as he could while letting himself wheeze. “Don’t suppose I could bother you for a drink?” The inhaler was imperfectly concealed in his hand, still in view of the door. “My eyes were bigger than my stamina, I’m afraid. Overdid it.” He wheezed a bit more for effect, but that was mostly for show. The drugs had done their work, and he’d learned to deal with his asthma a long time ago.

The door opened another few inches, the sun just barely illuminating a rumpled-looking man with salt-and-pepper hair, glasses perched on his nose.

“Are you doing okay?” Banner asked reluctantly, not coming fully into the light. Steve hid his alarm at being greeted by the good doctor. If Barton was off roaming the hills, that could be bad. He must have slipped out of the house somehow, even though Steve had been observing it for the past several days, and Steve mentally berated himself for the lapse. It would have made more sense for Barton to be the one to greet strangers, because it was unlikely for Barton to be physically hurt. Banner was all too mortal, and if Barton lost his advocate and protector, he’d have to go at it alone. Solo operation was hard as hell, Steve knew that more than most, and to be entirely cut off from resources to boot along with acquiring a rage monster inside your own body… he needed the help. _Anyone_ would need help.

“A little better, but I could use some water, if you have it,” Steve said, letting his wheezing wind down. Regardless, Barton was out and Steve-the-asthmatic-tourist didn’t know there were two people that lived here. The others would either be able to handle Barton, or not. Steve couldn’t afford to warn them through the earbud, and they were all watching him anyway, even if only one of them knew who he really was. He trusted their intelligence enough to be on the lookout regardless.

Banner finally pointed to a split-log bench and said, “Sit down; I’ll be right back.” Steve collapsed with a look of gratitude, feeling the hard cartridges of his Widower’s Bite against his wrists. Concealed by the thick cuffs of his coat and sweater, he still had a way to incapacitate Banner if everything went wrong. 

Of course, if everything really did go that wrong, it would probably just be more advisable to run.

Banner returned with a pitcher and tin cup, dripping wet, and Steve took it and sipped it carefully. It was tooth-achingly cold and tasted of minerals, but he couldn’t detect any obvious poisons. If it was something more exotic, it would take time to affect him, in which case he had antidotes in his supplies. He drank the water down with every evidence of gratitude, and accepted another cup as Banner kept looking all around the valley. Expecting helicopters and men in combat gear, most likely.

_We wouldn’t do that to you, Doctor. You aren’t guilty of anything but being a good man. A hell of a lot better than most of the people you know._

“Thanks,” Steve said, leaning back and letting the faint breeze cool the sweat on his face. “I really didn’t mean to overdo it that badly.”

“Don’t you have a hiking buddy or something? It’s dangerous up here for the inexperienced…” Banner dropped off, realizing Steve could take offense, and he laughed to put him at ease.

“Yeah, it’s my own fault, I know. I’m supposed to meet some people just west of here. There’s a valley…”

“Oh,” Bruce said, looking over that way. “Right.” He didn’t sound terribly convinced, but when was the last time someone had hiked up out of nowhere out here?

“I solemnly swear, I’m only up to good things,” Steve said, and pulled a couple empty water containers out of his pack. “Could I trouble you…?” He put on his best puppy dog eyes, and Bruce reluctantly went back into the house. As Banner opened the door, Steve could see a little more inside, including the computer with the satellite hook-up. So that’s how they were communicating with Dr. Ross all the way out here. He wondered who had hooked them up with the equipment. 

“How _you_ end up out here?” Steve called.

“Needed to get away from it all,” Bruce called back. “The usual.”

“All couldn’t be farther away,” Steve agreed amicably. “But don’t you miss anything out here?”

Banner came back out, handing Steve back his containers, and looked a little haunted. Steve could easily imagine what was going through his mind at that moment.

_Betty Ross, my labs, food I didn’t have to cook myself, stores, a job, and any sense of self-worth._

“Grass is always greener, no matter where you are,” Banner said with a shrug. “It’s not bad out here.”

“At least you’re away from all those jerks at the office,” Steve said, nodding sympathetically. “Or store or school or wherever.”

“Right. You feeling better?” Banner asked. Steve stood up and took a few deep breaths to show his lack of wheezing. “Good luck finding your buddies.”

Steve smiled and turned to go. Phase one, complete, if modified on the fly. If everything went well, Steve-the-yuppie-tourist would “inadvertently” intersect one of the two during the next couple of days, and then hike out past their cabin again. Non-threatening contact initially established, he’d introduce Thor, Tony, and Natasha as his friends during one of those times, and they would be able to quietly, carefully reveal themselves for who they really were in a controlled environment. Assuming revealing Steve’s identity to Tony and Thor worked out, after all. This wasn’t just about bringing Barton and Banner in, it was about revealing the point of SHIELD and what they needed everyone for. The world was, in the words of Steve’s mentor, “stranger than you already know.” And Steve knew a wide range of strange at this point.

Far better to do this here, where there was nothing to do but face the consequences, instead of in Malibu or New York. Under the stars, amidst the wild, it was easier to step away from the distractions of the greater world.

Feeling fairly confident, Steve started to walk away.

That’s when a thunderclap from above nearly deafened him.

He quickened his pace.

\--

Barton waited until he saw the others had moved off west, waited a good while longer to make sure they weren’t going to double back, and then took a quick turn around the little clearing they’d been using to do birding. Maybe they were just what they said they were, hikers out in the great wilds of Canada looking for something off the beaten path. Or maybe they were spies for the General.

Damn it, he really didn’t want to have to leave again. 

He hunted for clues in the leaf litter, looking for anything that didn’t match their story. MRE wrappers, army boot footprints, cigarette butts, GPS locators, even wireless cameras, any of those he might have suspected. He didn’t expect to kick over some leaves and stub his toe on a gleaming silver hammer that looked like something straight out of fantasy movie.

How the hell did that fit it anything he’d seen today? Clint reached over and pulled on it, and nearly wrenched his shoulder out of its socket. The thing might as well have been mounted in cement for all he budged it.

“The hell?” he muttered.

Then he looked closer at the hammer, and his jaw dropped. He _knew_ he’d seen that somewhere before. There were a few very blurry pictures of this hammer, or something like it, in Tony Stark’s hands when he’d returned from his international ass-kicking of all terrorists great and small. He’d heard a few stories about it in passing; picking up gossip from soldiers’ message boards and conspiracy websites. And “Anthony,” how dumb had he been not to have recognized that goatee?

Above his head, thunder growled. Clint looked up in alarm – where had that come from?

\--

Tony jerked to a halt so fast Thor nearly ran into him, and turned around. “He’s got her,” he said, paling.

“Who-?”

“Mjölnir. He’s got his hands on her.”

Thunder growled in response to Tony’s outrage, and Natasha could see lightning crawling in the bases of the sudden swell of thunderheads above.

“He cannot move her, Tony. She judged you worthy, not him. He cannot harm her,” Thor urged.

“I’m not worried about that! But there are pictures of me with her. He knows we’re not who we said we were.”

“Run or come clean?” 

“Come clean.” Steve broke out of the woods next to Natasha, and started shucking his pack and outerware with casual grace.

“Legal? What the fuck are you doing here?” Tony demanded.

“Steve Rogers, agent of SHIELD,” he said, black armor and Widower’s bite becoming visible as he stripped away his hiker persona.

“He’s with me,” Natasha said, cutting through Tony’s irritation and Thor’s growing ire. “We needed the help. We needed someone subtle. And you were pretty adamant about not having any official presence, so what did you think was going to happen?”

“And SHIELD sent you. Just you?” Thor said, eyeing Rogers up and down, testing his fitness with his eyes.

“She only trusted me around you,” Steve said.

“Wait, go back, you were in my _house_ ,” Tony said, clearly irritated enough not to let this drop. Storm clouds were still gathering, and this was not exactly the time or the place, but Tony wasn’t going to move until he got an explanation.

“Can we focus on the important things here?” Steve asked.

“You lied,” Tony accused, looking more at Natasha.

“I did not,” she said. The thunder boomed overhead, and Natasha looked over her shoulder. Tony might have been able to summon Mjölnir with a thought, but hadn’t wanted to startle Barton. And now, with the weather going, and Barton apparently standing right next to the hammer, he didn’t dare try to tip Barton over the edge. Natasha loosened her coat and dropped her pack, pushing off her outerware so she could move freely. If worse came to worse and Barton lost control, they had to be able to run. “I said I was working with SHIELD, which is true. I said they needed us to look into Barton and Banner and offer them a place and a job, and I said I needed help if something went wrong. I said I wanted to be respectful, and I said we’d be using SHIELD information.”

Tony held up a finger, as if about to protest, thought for a second, then dropped it. Then he pointed it at Steve. “Okay, ‘Nathan-’”

“You damn well know SHIELD wasn’t just going to give you their intel and say ‘good luck.’ I came to help, like she said.”

Tony still looked rebellious. “I don’t think we need any jackbooted government thugs here.”

“I don’t wear jackboots. If I were what you thought I was, I would have subdued Banner and used him as a lure to get Barton in your clutches, and hope the three of you could subdue him long enough to get him transported to a cage. You watched me. What did I do?”

Steve kept his face very calm and composed in the face of Tony’s growing anger, until Thor put a hand on his shoulder.

“He spoke to Dr. Banner. That was all he did.”

“Everyone with the right security clearance knows what happened to the last five capture squads Ross sent after Barton. Banner was the one that warned them off, and then struck back as soon as they showed their intentions. He spared Barton from transforming at least twice during those attempts, because he was plenty dangerous on his own. We’re not trying to capture them, because they have evading that down to a science. We need them to talk to us. They deserve a choice.” Steve stared straight at Tony. “They deserve a chance to do some good. I know they want to.”

Tony’s expression softened and the thunder above eased off slightly.

“If what you say is true, they have rarely been offered that,” Thor said. “It is a common thread in all our stories.”

“Look, I lie a lot in my job; it’s necessary life skill for what I do. But I don’t lie about things like this, or people like them.”

“Do you think Banner would have talked to _us_?” Natasha pointed out.

Tony nodded reluctantly, and then started as Thor abruptly thumped his pack to the ground and loosened the zipper, the metallic gleam of his Iron Man suit visible through the gap.

“We will have the opportunity momentarily to see if that is true,” Thor said. Natasha looked over her shoulder to see Dr. Banner advancing through the trees. With his bow. Her heart sped up; if Barton followed them to see if Mjölnir was the real deal, this was going to get very awkward. And violent.

\--

Clint swallowed as he cleared the trees and saw a colorful group of four people in a loose circle. The woman had stripped down to a patriotic suit of red, white, and blue, looking uncannily like Captain America – one of his history teachers had had a reproduction poster of her, or at least what she was supposed to have looked like, on the walls of his classroom. Tony Stark and Theo were seemingly ignoring her colorful costume change in favor of arguing with the fourth man, the hiker who had been at the cabin, who was now in government commando black.

Clint felt the Hulk throw himself at the walls of his mind at the sight that had always brought pain, and fought down the surge of fear and panic.

_It’s **one** man. I’m strong enough for one man, Hulk. I can handle one man. Please, I’m strong enough for one – I can save myself, please!_

He repeated that over and over, torn between keeping ahold of the gun to convince the Hulk he could defend himself, or tossing it aside so he wouldn’t crush it if he couldn’t hold the transformation back.

_MORE THAN ONE. NEED HULK. SAVE BARTON, SAVE BANNER!_

What if Clint didn’t want to be saved? What if Clint was tired of running, of fighting, what if he wanted to remove the temptation of the Hulk from the unscrupulous? He’d thought of that before, back when Bruce and him had only weathered the second attempt to capture them, and in a moment of weakness had pressed the cool, smooth barrel to his chin. He’d thought maybe he could give Bruce back his life if he was gone. He’d caught Bruce slipping tiny personal notes into the packages he’d gotten smuggled back to Betty, and looking at the one picture of her he had with all the longing in the world.

But Clint hadn’t pulled the trigger. His sniper training had held, that you always had to have a full plan, that after the kill, there had to be an extraction, an escape route, and those could be even more elaborate than setting up the shot itself. If it worked, if Clint was gone, it wouldn’t save Bruce a thing; it wouldn’t give him his life back. Ross would haul him back and set him to making more Hulks, and without Clint there, Bruce wouldn’t be able to protect himself. Without Bruce to keep him sane, Clint knew he’d lose himself in the monster inside. 

There was no easy way out.

It was Clint and Hulk together that screamed at the intruders into their world. “ _Go away! Leave us alone!_ ”

The woman turned towards him, her hands empty, and next to her the commando did the same. Behind them, Tony and Theo were looking over their shoulders, and with a sinking heart, Clint realized Bruce was advancing from the opposite side, working his way around to Clint.

“Go, get out of here. Now!” Bruce yelled, an arrow knocked, his bow pointed at the ground for now, but Clint knew how quickly he could fire, and how deadly he was at that range. Bruce might not have been a soldier, but he’d been taught harsh and painful lessons that had brought his skills to a high peak at a very young age.

From the way Tony and Theo were looking at him, they respected that skill. Good; Bruce had put enough holes in enough people that they _should_ respect him by now. Clint just prayed, with what tiny amount of himself was not occupied with holding back his transformation, that they wouldn’t hurt Bruce.

The Hulk roared again in his mind, and Clint realized that imagining Bruce lying bloody on the ground was the last thing he needed to think about. Sweat started to trickle down his face as Clint cast the rifle aside and tried to hold onto his humanity with everything he had.

\--

Natasha’s heart sank as Barton collapsed to the ground, his clothing straining to hold him as he struggled against the monster inside him. They hadn’t wanted to do this, hadn’t wanted to provoke him, dammit, they hadn’t even had a chance to come clean yet! But in the face of an impending Hulk, they couldn’t afford to be anything less than fully prepared. Behind her, Natasha heard the mechanical clicks and whirring as Thor armored up, and thunder rumbled overhead as Tony held out his hand for Mjölnir. Banner stared at them all, wide-eyed, and Natasha was very, very glad that Barton’s head was down as Tony’s hammer went whizzing by to slap into his palm. Thor was extremely intimidating as Iron Man, and thunder growled softly overhead as Tony held Mjölnir at his side. If anyone could give the Hulk a run for his money, it would be those two, and Banner was more than smart enough to see it.

“We’re not here to hurt you,” Steve said, keeping his hands open and away from his sides. “Dr. Banner, please, we’re not trying to capture you. We wanted to talk; I wanted to ease you into things, so that’s why I didn’t start out in uniform.”

Banner’s bow was up and though Natasha was not exactly familiar with the ancient weapon, it looked very substantial, more than enough to punch a hole clean through her or Steve with ease. She twisted her wrists the right way and her bracers opened up slightly, forming two small diamond-shaped shields. She hadn’t wanted to be burdened with anything that would tend to get lost in the field, or that she would have to fling at an enemy – guns served well enough for long distance, but for close-up work, she relied on agility as much as strength. Howard had designed the vibranium bracer-shields to let her deflect bullets without weighing her down. 

But Steve had no such protection, and bulletproof vests didn’t do well against sharp objects.

Banner looked between Thor, in his silver, red, and gold armor, Tony with his massive magical hammer, Natasha in her red, white, and blue, and back to Steve in his government spy black. If they had been a new version of Ross’ Hulkbuster squads, they should have opened up, guns blazing, well before this. Their restraint made him hesitate to start firing, but unwilling to drop his bow. Barton’s panting was harsh in the background, but Steve’s soothing words, plus the lack of people starting to shoot, seemed to be giving him more time to regain control. 

But he was still struggling, and the hands gripping the long meadow grass had taken on a decidedly greenish tinge.

“Cap?” Tony muttered very quietly. “I really don’t want to hit this guy, but you squishier people are way too close for comfort.”

Natasha waved Tony back. “We’re not running.”

“You may have to,” Thor said, sliding back his face plate. “Captain, Agent Rogers, we will do Barton no favors by tallying more deaths to his conscience. His other form is a berserker; he will be unable to give us mercy.”

Thor had a naturally carrying voice, and Banner’s head swiveled to him, eyes wide with shock.

“Oh God…” Barton’s voice, a broken growl, broke the tableau. “Go! Go _away!_ ”

There was something in his tone that pulled on Natasha from seventy years ago. One of the 107th whom she’d rescued during that first mission had been experimented upon by Schmidt’s pet scientist Zola, and he’d cried out in the same way as whatever chemicals and variations on the serum had burned through his blood, trying to change him. 

He’d ended up dead later, fallen off a train on foreign soil, never knowing what had happened to him in the HYDRA base but unwilling to sit on the sidelines. James Barnes had been his name, like Steve's friend, and all that young man had wanted to do was serve his country, be a good soldier, just like her.

Just like Barton. If she’d been born in this time, or he in hers, who knew? He might have been in the Howling Commandos, or she might have served with him in one of the hot, sandy, uncertain wars of this century. They might have been brothers-in-arms. Instead he’d been changed as James had, and had everything familiar ripped away. He’d just been trying to become better to serve his country.

Natasha stepped forward and let her voice take on the bark of the drill instructor who’d whipped her into shape and helped her get Dr. Erskine’s attention. Sargent Dain had been hard as nails, but fair and even as the scales of Justice, about as far away from General Ross as she could imagine.

“You stow that crap right now, soldier!”

Banner shifted his bow to cover her, eyes wide, and she could feel the stares of the others burning into her back. Barton suddenly looked up, his face distorted, too large, too green, but with a hint of hope through the mask of rage and despair that creased his features. 

“Do you think this is a joke? Is that a smile I see? I am not here for your amusement! On your feet and salute your superior officer!”

Barton snapped to his feet with the reflexes of someone who’d learned to follow his drill instructor in basic even when dog-tired and half dead. He stared at her, the green of his eyes slightly tinging with his normal blue.

“Soldier! At ease.” She let her parade-ground inflection soften only on the last word, and Barton used that, and the sight of the others holding very still in the face of Banner’s unwavering aim, to wrest full control back of himself. He collapsed to his knees, breathing in huge gasps of air that he slowly began to relax, the Hulk fading back inside him. The gratitude on his face, the relief, nearly made her dizzy.

Everyone was on edge, standing still yet quivering with tension, and something had to break. When Natasha flipped her shields back down, Bruce’s wire-tight reflexes snapped, and the bow twanged in her direction. Time seemed to slow as she tried to jump out of the way, slow enough that she could see Banner’s horror as he uselessly grabbed for where the arrow had been. Barton’s mouth gaped in shock, and Steve lunged in her direction, trying to shield her with his body. Natasha could see that Banner’s aim was too good; it would skewer them both through.

Suddenly Mjölnir flashed between the two groups, destroying the arrow in a spectacular display of well-timed overkill. It plowed into the ground a good five yards to Banner’s side as Natasha hit the ground, Steve sprawled on top of her protectively. He swore in three different languages as he rolled off her and to his feet, eying Barton warily. Natasha picked herself up as Banner started to apologize, his face looking bloodless with shock.

“Don’t,” she said, shaking her head, giving Tony a grateful glance. Thor could have easily shielded her too, or blasted the arrow to ash, but a look back at him, with his stoic and solemn countenance, told her why he hadn’t. She most likely could have survived an arrow hit long enough for him to fly her to a hospital, but firing energy weapons or guns very close to the man who’d just managed to rein his rage monster not two minutes prior would have meant more than just one arrow wound.

Thor claimed to have been trained as a prince; he understood the needs of the many versus the few. That kind of wisdom could be so rare; knowing you had strength and not always using it was why Dr. Erskine had chosen her.

They had, after all, come to talk, not to fight. Not if they could help it.

“My God,” Banner said finally, and laid his bow on the ground with shaking hands. “I didn’t mean…” He stopped himself from trying to apologize again, and just let out a long, slow breath, turning to Barton. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” He also clearly wasn’t going to get up any time soon, and Banner seemed to be all right with that. Natasha echoed Barton’s reassurance about her health before Banner could ask her. Still shaking his head, Banner went to Mjölnir. Tony opened his mouth to warn him about her immovability, when Banner carefully pulled her up from the ground and carried her back to Tony.

Tony’s mouth remained open, and Steve’s jaw sagged a little as Banner handed the hammer back. Thor strode up, grinning widely, and slapped Banner on the shoulder with a care for his metal gauntlet and robotic-enhanced strength.

“It seems we have found another worthy friend, Dr. Banner,” Thor said. “For Mjölnir only lets herself be lifted by those most deserving.”

Barton finally staggered to his feet and closed the gap between him and Banner, putting his hand on Banner’s other shoulder. “That’s totally you, Doc.”

“What…?” Banner said, blinking in confusion. Tony reached out and took Mjölnir from him, cradling her in his arms as Thor took his hand away.

“It looks like you just got a Golden Ticket, Brucey,” he said, his natural banter resurfacing after that revelation. 

“Tony _Stark?_ ” Bruce said, exchanging a look with Barton as he finally registered who was cradling the massive weapon.

“In the flesh.” Tony may have flexed a little, Natasha was sure of it. “Killer thesis, by the way.”

“And the rest of you?”

“Thor Odinsson, of Asgard, now known as Iron Man,” Thor said with a bow.

“Fits you better than Theo,” Barton said, and Thor smiled.

“It was only meant as a gentle deception, to keep from alarming you. I hope you can forgive me.”

Barton gave an expansive shrug; alarming was all a matter of perspective with all that had happened today.

“Natasha Romanov, Captain America,” Natasha said, raising her chin.

“Holy shit,” Barton muttered.

“Yeah, sort of my reaction too,” Tony said sympathetically.

“How?”

“Ice,” Natasha said succinctly. “Thank global warming for me getting out.”

Barton nearly laughed.

“Steve Rogers, agent of SHIELD. We came up here to offer you a place,” Steve said, between one blink and the next going from shocked to all business, and Natasha swore she could faintly hear him rapidly compartmentalizing. “There’s a program called the Avengers Initiative. You wouldn’t have to run anymore. Ross wouldn’t be able to touch you, either one of you. And no experiments.”

Tony and Thor exchanged glances; this was the first they’d heard of the offer either. Steve turned towards them. “No more lies about the important things.”

“Offering us a place to do what?” Barton asked, eyes narrowing.

“To fight the fights we never could,” Steve said. “The fights no one else is capable of. People who can’t be matched and won’t be reasoned with-.”

“Like me?” Barton said ominously.

“You weren’t trying to take over the world the last time I checked,” Steve said so blandly that Barton nearly cracked a smile.

“I’m here to help Clint, not to turn into some kind of government assassin,” Banner snapped.

“Doc,” Barton said, a peculiar world-weariness in his voice. They exchanged a look that held an entire conversation in it, something they’d talked about before, Natasha was sure of it. Maybe Banner had actually begun to enjoy tricking Ross’ men into underestimating him, and hadn’t liked that revelation about himself. Maybe it was about Barton himself, that if they hadn’t found a cure in three years it was likely one didn’t exist.

“And who said anything about government?” Steve added. “The threats we’re talking about… are not exactly local.”

That got _everyone’s_ attention.

“Another world has challenged Midgard?” Thor asked, looking stormy.

Steve was about to respond when he froze, the look on his face meaning someone was contacting him over his earbud. He lost a little color, and looked at the group, focusing on Thor.

“Do you know someone called Loki?” he demanded.

“My brother, the king-” Thor began, looking shocked

“Something just landed on deck in the name of Loki, got our location out of one of our agents through means no one is ready to understand, and went flying straight for us.”

“ETA,” Natasha said, Barton echoing her almost simultaneously.

“They’re saying less than five minutes at its current speed.”

Thor flipped down his faceplate and scanned the heavens, the Iron Man mask fixing on one point in the sky.

“The Destroyer,” he said, his voice sounding hollow and sad even through its synthesized filters. “Brother, what have I done to anger you?”


	3. Chapter 3

“This isn’t some trick?” Banner asked, glaring at Steve. “Some test to see how we perform?”

“We just lost a dozen people trying to fend that thing off the Helicarrier,” Steve said grimly, making sure his guns were ready. Natasha’s heart clenched at that news and Banner looked abashed.

“What are we looking at, Big Thunder?” Tony demanded. The thing was soaring closer every second, and if Thor recognized anything…

“The Destroyer, one of the protectors of the vaults. A dumb machine, but powerful and self-healing, fueled by forge-fire and powered by magic. It is meant for one purpose, to seek and destroy.”

“A machine?” Tony asked eagerly. 

Thor shook his head and seemed to be searching for words. “Golem. No circuitry inside,” Thor said, sounding apologetic. “It cannot be reasoned with-.”

“No one’s gonna shed a tear if we rip it apart?” Barton asked, his voice still unsteady.

“Not one,” Thor said firmly.

“Clint, don’t,” Banner said-- no, pleaded. “Don’t do it.”

“I never plan to,” Clint said, smiling very slightly.

A line of fire appeared in the sky, streaking towards them, and Steve’s eyes went round as it approached. “This thing is huge!” He holstered his guns and dug around in his backpack, coming up with a long container that he tossed to Banner.

“Happy birthday, Doc. Don’t drop them, they tend to explode,” he said tersely. “The R&D team says they’re a little heavy – aim high.”

Banner ripped open the top, eyes widening when he saw it was a quiver stuffed with arrows, different groups marked with different symbols – explosive, gas, stonecutting. He strapped them on his back without a word and pulled one out, holding it against the string. Natasha snapped her shields back in place and crouched, ready to spring.

“What are you going to do?” Natasha asked, keeping her voice low even as her eyes widened at the size of the Destroyer.

“Play target. But we all have to work together”

She took a single deep breath, looking at the five men around her, all of them tensed for action. This was Canada, not Europe, a magical robot and not one of HYDRA's death machines, but this was what she had been doing for years. She locked eyes with Steve.

“Romanov, call it,” Steve said, eyes on the descending trail of flame.

“Tony, light it up, Thor come in immediately afterward with heavy ordinance. Split and fall back, I’ll draw its attention so Banner and Rogers can have their shots. Barton, you’re in reserve in case none of that works,” she said very quickly, and punched her hand forward. Tony swung his hammer and took off into the sky, Thor rocketing away behind him. 

“Clint, get back,” Banner urged. “We’ll handle this.”

“Like hell,” Barton said, fishing around in the grass for his hunting rifle. Steve yanked a long black case out of his dropped pack and kicked it over to Barton.

“Less than a minute,” Natasha warned, watching the contrail-like repulsor wake of the Iron Man armor as it soared higher to meet the meteor-like arc of the descending Destroyer.

“What the hell else were you carrying in that- Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Barton breathed the last as he opened the case to reveal the heavy-caliber sniper rifle inside. Natasha knew it was a twin to Barton’s own he’d had to leave behind when he’d run. Steve had been carrying it as a peace offering, ironically. 

“No idea if it’s going to scratch that thing, but we’ll take what we can get,” Steve said, a whine building up around him as he charged up his Widower’s Bite. His own handguns and electric stunners were likely the weakest directly damaging weapons amongst them, and he knew it, but as he’d said, he was supposed to be a distraction.

“Why the fuck were you carrying this around locked and loaded?” Barton demanded at a shout, falling back with Banner to give them a better angle, the rifle looking very at home in his hands. His breathing and color were a lot better and calmer despite the increasing stress.

“Explanations later, boys!” Natasha called, as the three gleaming metal specks in the sky met. There was a _whump_ of displaced air and a ringing, bell-like tone that brought a whiff of ozone through the meadow as one shining speck went off at a right angle. “Tony,” Natasha said. She wanted to grab the binoculars from Thor’s dropped coat to get a better view but didn’t dare take her eyes off the sky.

“Hit it with a glancing blow, and it backhanded him,” Barton reported. Natasha flicked her gaze back to see him tracking the action through his rifle scope.

A few explosions in the sky, closer this time. 

“Direct hits, but it’s not stopping. Thor is in a tail chase. Tony’s coming behind him.”

By now the Destroyer was close enough that they didn’t need a long-range play-by-play, and Natasha stepped forward, her arm shields out, the colors of her suit gleaming brightly in the sunlight, and screamed up at the descending fire-and-metal golem.

Tony caught up with the Destroyer as it came down, only to have it abruptly change direction to avoid a hit from Mjölnir. Barton kept tracking it, then snapped off three shots in rapid succession. Metallic pings sounded out as Bruce sighted with his own weapon. The first two shots went wide, and Steve wasn’t surprised. It took time to accustom yourself to a new weapon, and the specialty arrows were heavy in comparison to the deer-killing bolts Banner normally carried. But the third shot hit hard on the heels of Barton’s, and Steve could see the arrow envelop the Destroyer in fire and smoke. It _slammed_ into the earth fifty yards from Natasha, making a small crater. Natasha ran forward, Steve right behind her, Tony and Thor pulling up to hover over the smoking ruin of a meadow. 

There was a metallic grinding sound, and suddenly the Destroyer leapt out of the crater, clearing the cloud of smoke with ease. It landed a dozen yards from Natasha, but with its back to her, turning its head up to fire a searing blast of incandescent red and orange from its eye-slit at Tony and Thor. Thor took just fraction of the hit, the force of it spinning him sideways, but Tony took the brunt of it, and went flying backwards hard enough to crash into trees and be lost from view. Natasha and Steve wasted no time in aiming and emptying a few magazines into the back of the creature, to nearly no effect. A more carefully-aimed series of shots from Barton didn’t do much more, just making it jerk slightly as the dents and dings began to straighten themselves out.

“Down!” Banner roared, and Natasha and Steve split and rolled to either side as another explosion from his arrows pounded their backs. That only drove the thing back a dozen paces, snapping some of the bands of metal that seemed to make up its body. As they watched, its fiery heart seemed to meld the bands back together.

“Not working,” Barton said calmly, backing up. Steve ran forward, hurling two disruptor discs at the thing before diving between its legs and running off at an angle before it could get a bead on him. The electricity danced over the thing, making it jerk slightly before shivering as the discs abruptly broke apart. Natasha was hard on Steve’s heels, using the thing’s momentary distraction to slice at its knees with her vibranium shields. _That_ gave the thing more of a pause as the joints parted, sending it to the ground. Natasha was just a few steps behind Steve, but that was enough to make a difference when the Destroyer lashed out with a long arm. The sweep of it caught her and hurled her across the meadow, her body rolling only under partial control. Steve’s breath caught, because he could guess how hard something of that size could hit.

“Captain!” Barton called, his voice sounding rougher and deeper than it should have. Steve couldn’t turn to look, but he was praying the man didn’t go green.

“Shit, shit, _shit_ ,” Banner said, voice tight with repressed fear. “Rogers, _down_.” Another pair of arrows exploded on contact with the Destroyer, driving it back another few yards before the thing could refocus on Steve with its heat-ray. The bands around its knees were reforming again, even as part of its chest unraveled, aided from above as Thor came storming in. The repulsor rays from his suit took advantage of Banner’s work, cracking open the chest further. The inferno inside yawned, sending a wave of blistering heat over all of them, the grass around them smoldering.

Suddenly a red-and-blue flash leapt up high, legs clamping around the Destroyer’s head. Captain America slashed her shields across its eyeless face, headless of the heat of the thing, trying to open up the head and stop whatever was making it tick. Steve heard her scream as contact with its metal body seared her flesh, but she never stopped.

“Keep it down!” Steve called, grabbing his guns again and focusing on its legs. The bullets didn’t do much at all, but the slight damage and noise kept it focused on more than one thing, rather than just trying to pluck off Natasha and kill her. Banner concentrated his fire on its insides, the hiss and acrid smoke showing he’d found the acid arrowheads. Barton’s own larger rounds followed an instant later; whatever flash of anger he’d had, he’d manage to master it for the moment. Thor came circling back around, the ice-blue repulsor rays knocking it down again before its reforming knees could heave it to its feet. 

The Destroyer bent backwards, then gripped the ground with its hands and shoved off with enough force to send it a dozen feet into the air. That gave its head a clear view of everyone, and a lethal fire blast missed Banner by a whisker as he dodged at the same time Natasha jammed her shields into the top of its head. Steve could see Banner’s clothes were on fire, and he was rolling to put them out, teeth jammed together to keep from screaming. Natasha finally had to fling herself off of the Destroyer, her suit black with burns. Thor took advantage of the momentary clear shot, but his repulsor blast was met by an outstretched metal hand which seemed to absorb the force of the shot.

Natasha was just getting to her feet, exchanging a glance with Steve that he knew all too well, the look of someone rapidly trying to come up with a win or at least a draw out of a hopeless scenario. Tony was still nowhere to be seen, Banner was trying to keep from burning alive, and Thor was circling tightly, likely trying to figure out what in his arsenal would actually hurt the Destroyer permanently instead of just tickling it. The Destroyer’s response to Tony’s pursuit meant Steve was almost certain it was vulnerable to Mjölnir. But that didn’t matter until Tony actually reappeared; they certainly couldn’t afford to take their attention off the Destroyer in order to find him!

“ _I have explosives that may do more damage, but you all must get clear!_ ” Thor called out over Steve and Natasha’s earbuds. 

“Get Banner!” Natasha shouted at Steve, sprinting back towards Barton. Steve followed suit, trying to get Banner by the elbow, smothering the last of the flames with his tac-gloved hands. Banner made a painted moan, but moved with alacrity at Steve’s touch, one hand still clutched around his bow.

“No, Clint, no…” Banner said, turning his head towards Barton, eyes wide, voice cracking. Steve turned to see Barton casting aside his rifle with care taking slow steps forward as he kicked off his shoes, shrugged off his jacket and shirt, leaving them discarded in his wake. Barton looked back only once, his gaze determined.

“Keep Bruce safe. Captain, pop the fly ball!” he shouted, and then took a deep breath as the Destroyer started to pull itself together again. “ _GET DOWN!_ ” he roared, his voice deepening as his body changed color, expanding in size with sickening cracks and pops, forcing him to his knees briefly before he rose again twelve feet tall, massively muscled, and green. His roar echoed around the meadow like a jet engine, and Steve inanely thought, _Ross thought he could control **him?**_

With a dozen thundering steps, the Hulk grappled with the Destroyer, roaring as he gripped it with one massive hand, punching at it with the other, howling when he felt the heat from its still-gaping chest cavity. Thor had pulled back into a hover, understandably a bit startled by Barton’s transformation, unwilling to drop rockets or bombs on an ally, no matter how tough. Steve saw Natasha’s attention was not on the fight, but scanning the trees, and he followed her gaze in time to see Tony finally taking to the sky.

“Thor, the Hulk is going to punch the Destroyer up. Hit it hard at the apex and get it into Tony’s path!” she called. Thor circled again as the Hulk, with a flailing of fists that were pounding away heedless of the Destroyer’s heat, finally delivered an orbiting uppercut that sent the huge thing flying up into the air. Thor jetted in, rockets screaming from the Iron Man suit, blasting it backwards just as Tony cleared the trees. With a cry of joy and precision timing, Tony cracked down with Mjölnir as lightning struck from the clear blue sky. 

The resulting explosion knocked down a hell of a lot of trees and made a new crater. The shockwave sent everyone’s ears ringing, and a wave of dust and the smell of ozone rolled over everyone. In the aftermath, Steve stood up slowly. Banner leaned on him heavily. Natasha had managed to stay braced against the shock, but her costume was now gray with dust overlaying the blacked burned parts. She shoved off her helmet and cowl, sighing a little as she heard a shout of joy over her communicator from Thor and Tony both. 

“It’s down for good this time,” she said after a long moment, hanging her head as she sighed in relief.

Looking a little closer, Steve couldn’t see the Hulk. If they lost him… all of this had been for nothing. Banner would never forgive them. Steve doubted any of them would forgive themselves.

“Clint?” Banner called, wincing. Steve kept his grip on the good doctor on every non-burnt part he could, because the man was about to do something stupid, he just knew it. “ _Clint?_ ”

Natasha strode across to the smaller crater where the Hulk had been wailing on the Destroyer, the air above it still shimmering with heat. With care, she reached into it and pulled out Clint’s limp form, now back to regular Clint-size. “He’s okay!” she shouted, as Steve had to hustle to keep up with Banner’s frantic, panic-driven haste. “Just out.”

“Hulkover,” Banner said succinctly, and with evident relief upon seeing Barton dusty and unconscious but whole. “He’ll be out for an hour or less.” He looked reluctant to have imparted that much information, and Steve understood where he was coming from. He didn’t want any government organization to have solid data on Barton’s capabilities, just in case.

“Good. Then by the time we get everyone patched up, he’ll be awake, and we can see about getting you guys to HQ,” Natasha said.

“ _Not_ the Triskellion,” Steve said. “We’re going to need someplace safer until we find out what the hell’s going on. If anything else comes after us, I don’t want it to touch down in D.C.”

“I’d rather hope it is not Hela. She is rather formidable. Doctor, your bravery and aim is remarkable. Friend Barton as well,” Thor said, touching down and retracting his faceplate. “The Destroyer is gone, and thoroughly.”

Tony thumped down next to Thor, grinning.

“Is it ever. If I’d had a few more minutes to consider, I would have grand-slammed the Silver Surfer-wannabe here faster when it first popped up.” Tony’s grin quickly sobered up when he saw the burns on everyone. “Right. Quinjet. I’ll go spin that up, and where _are_ we going? I’ve got a few spots in mind unless you have a better idea.”

“Helicarrier,” Natasha said. “I want to see what happened. Steve has the coordinates.”

“It just _came_ from-.”

“Unless there are multiple Destroyers, I don’t think it’s coming back for a rematch.”

Tony snorted. “Right.” With a throw of his hammer, Tony disappeared from view. 

Natasha carefully helped Bruce get out of his scorched clothing, thanking Bruce’s wisdom, or frugality, for picking more old-fashioned outdoors gear. Most of it was natural fiber, which meant it hadn’t melted into his wounds. He was going to be very tender for a few weeks, but good reflexes had saved him permanent damage. She fished out the medkit from the bottom of her own discarded backpack and opened it up.

“Not nearly as bad as I thought,” she said. “Second degree, at best.”

Bruce twisted around to look at himself where he could, and nodded tightly. There were other marks under the burns, old scars on his back, too many to be an accident. Natasha held out the cooling gels, catching his eyes.

“I can help you, if you want,” she said. Bruce flicked his eyes at the blackened parts of her own costume, and Steve could see him struggling between habitual wariness and new gratitude. He nodded slowly, and sighed in relief as she swiped the cool gel over the reddened and blistered skin. He braced himself as Natasha carefully applied bandages over the gels and sealants to keep them in place, and finally relaxed all over as the numbing agents in the gel did their work. Natasha took a shirt from the pile of discards where she and Steve had shed their civilian clothing and handed it to him.

Thor narrowed his eyes and strode back to the crater as Natasha tended to Bruce, tossing aside pieces of the Destroyer. Some of the chunks were the size of a small car, looking well over and above what a man even of Thor’s physique could have moved. Natasha could see Bruce looking impressed and turned her head to hide her smile. It was a relief when you realized the extent of the help you had at your back. “Hah!” Thor bounded up out of the crater a few minutes later, cradling a blackened hunk of metal in his hand. He flipped his faceplate down, the eyes flashing white as the computers inside the suit scanned what he was seeing.

 _“I’m inbound, be there in five,”_ Tony said over the comms. _“I’m patched in to Thor’s suit AI, and Thor, buddy, that is not Asgard tech. That is decidedly human-made.”_

Natasha would freely admit she was not one of those people who knew how things worked, but even blackened and twisted, she could see bits of wires and fried circuit boards. The Destroyer itself had nothing inside but fire and metal and (presumably) magic or some advanced Asgardian tech, as she had seen from her painfully up-close-and-personal view

Steve and Bruce took a look at the crumbling bits in Thor’s hands, Bruce picking up a stick to probe at the still-smoldering pieces.

 _“Not exactly sure what’s what just from the scan, but give me some time in a lab and I can have that reverse-engineered by lunch,”_ Tony said. 

“I can help you there,” Bruce said, when Natasha relayed what Tony had said.

 _“It’s a date, Banner,”_ Tony said with a smile in his voice. There was sound of whirring engines overhead, and the Quinjet soared to a landing a short distance away. Natasha scooped up Clint in her arms, bearing his weight easily as Steve helped Bruce up the ramp. Inside, Tony turned around long enough to raise an eyebrow.

“Tony, let’s lift,” Natasha said, wanting to be far away from here before anything else decided to drop by.

“Doesn’t Spy McGee here have his own ride?” Tony asked, giving Steve a look. 

“I’ll send one of the junior agents to get my car,” Steve said blandly. Tony didn’t roll his eyes, but it looked like he wanted to.

“Wait, what’s the Helicarrier we’re supposed to be going to?” Bruce asked urgently, ignoring the byplay.

“Flying aircraft carrier,” Steve said succinctly. “Stealth-capable, which is why normally things like the Destroyer have a hell of a time finding it.”

“Wait until Clint wakes up. If he wakes up on a strange plane or stranger… flying aircraft carrier, neither of us are guaranteeing the Hulk won’t make an appearance.”

Thor coughed. “That would be unfortunate.” Tony muttered in agreement.

“Also important, I need to get my notes out of our cabin, because I’m not leaving them behind for any of Ross’ goons to find,” Bruce said stubbornly. “Clint will be up in less than an hour, so we’re not leaving until then.”

Steve didn’t quite sigh in annoyance, but instead went up to the cockpit to tell SHIELD that the Avengers Initiative would get there as soon as they’d get there. 

\--

Clint was muzzily swimming out of the dark waters of unconsciousness, wearily telling the Hulk in a mental whisper, _Nice job on the Destroyer._ That got him a sort of pleased rumble, almost a purr in his subconscious. That little trick had been one of the best Doctor Ross had come up with; communicating clearly with the Hulk about what was good and what was bad had helped immensely. Clint was lying on his side in what felt like grass, skin still sensitive from the shift, a soft blanket thoughtfully thrown over him to ward off the chilly wind. 

Bruce’s soft voice broke his reverie, “Clint, we need to get going. We’re going on their Quinjet to a Helicarrier to speak with the SHIELD Director. All right?”

Clint gave him a sleepy thumbs-up, not quite feeling up for more. If he had to, he could shake himself into full alertness and run, but nothing in Bruce’s tone had indicated the need for that, so Clint was going to take his sweet time pulling himself together. It had been a day full of excitement already, and he was certain it wasn’t over yet, so he’d take what he could. Strong arms gently lifted him up then laid him on a padded bench, buckling a seat belt over him. Engines fired up, and in less than a minute they were airborne and soaring off into the wild blue yonder. Bruce was talking to the others, and Clint was a bit surprised he could hear them so clearly. Obviously this Quinjet had a hell of a lot better insulation than some of the transport planes Clint had been on.

“Does he need anything?” Natasha was saying in response to something Bruce said.

“A Gatorade with some supplements when he’s fully awake. He’ll be fine, really.”

“It always takes him time to recover from…?” That sounded like Steve.

“Hulking out,” Clint muttered just audible enough to be heard.

“Yeah,” Bruce said, a little reluctantly. Clint turned himself over enough to squint at the assembly. Tony was in the cockpit, but he was slapping a few buttons, then turning half away; probably had just put it on autopilot. His fancy hammer was on the deck near his feet. Thor was out of his armor, which was standing on its own at one end of the bench like a sentry. The black-clad commando, Steve, was just putting away a phone after rapidly texting something. Probably getting people to clean up the Destroyer mess before someone stumbled over it. 

Steve’s eyes slid sideways as the others leaned forward, interested to hear what Bruce had to say. He took advantage of that distraction to slip his hand into a pocket of his vest, then up to his lips. Clint saw a pill stuck to the man’s fingertip, which then disappeared into his mouth, under his tongue. Steve used the motion to quickly blot some sweat from his face, distracting from his other hand going to a slim pocket on his combat trousers, taking out what looked like an auto-injector. He stabbed himself through his pants and put the injector away quickly, clasping his hands together in a casual posture. But the first two fingers of his left hand were over the pulse point on his wrist. After a few seconds, Steve seemed satisfied, and relaxed minutely.

Then he glanced over at Clint, head jerking up in a tiny nod. Clint blinked at him, then gave an equally small nod in return. He didn’t think those were performance-enhancing drugs or recreational pharmaceuticals. Steve answered him silently by turning his wrist to the side and nudging up his sleeve. Circled around the base of the electrical weapon on his arm was a rubberized version of a medical alert bracelet with more abbreviations than Clint had seen outside of Bruce’s scientific notes. Huh. Not exactly what Clint had been expecting. 

Captain America -- _Natasha_ \-- he reminded himself, was across from him. She had her helmet off and was finishing checking… damn. She had what looked like a Glock 19 in her right holster, but the other had an honest-to-God .357 Magnum in the left one. Probably for making exceptionally big holes in things if necessary. After seeing how gloriously unaffected the Destroyer had been after Bruce’s arrows and Clint’s rifle rounds, she hadn’t seen the need to waste many bullets. Besides, Clint had remembered her bracers cutting through that thing’s metal skin without much problem.

Bruce had mumbled a few disclaimers while Clint had been watching, and now looked like he was about to clam up again. Clint reached out and tapped him on the arm. “Come on. Let them know.” Bruce let out a slow breath, and Clint laid himself back down to enjoy semi-consciousness again. They’d had a lot of discussions over the past few years, what they’d do if they ever found a cure. What they’d do if they _didn’t_. A cure was looking less and less likely every day and for now? They had been found by people who seemed to give a damn. They’d tried to introduce themselves as gently as possible, and had given Clint and Bruce weapons. Who gave weapons to someone they intended to _use_ as a weapon? And they wanted to fight against things like the Destroyer, sent by no country, but by some other place. That was something Clint could get the Hulk behind with a clean conscience. 

“Yes, it always takes him some time to recover. Depends on how fast the transformation was, if he had to fight it, how long the Hulk was fighting; there’s a lot of different factors. He was only Hulked out for a short time, but he was fighting it a lot in the beginning, so that’s why he’s mostly out now,” Bruce said. Clint gave the room another sleepy thumps-up just to show he was paying attention, if not up for much contribution.

“Which is part of your notes and why you didn’t want it in Ross’ hands, which I completely understand,” Tony said thoughtfully. “You and I need some quality lab time together, Banner, seriously.”

“No objections here.”

“They’re clearing out some space for you at the Helicarrier labs, for _that_ ,” Steve said, pointing at the piece of wreckage Thor had pulled from the Destroyer. “So you’ll get your wish.”

“What about you, Spy McGee?” Tony asked. “Or is it Nathan Rushman?”

“I used to be an analyst at SHIELD. Then a good friend of mine went undercover and vanished. I worked like hell to become a field agent to save him,” Steve said tersely. So tersely that no one needed to hear the ending to that story. Clint could guess though, from that little familiar medication ritual, that Steve had gone through more than “hell” to be a field agent.

“You’re really Captain America?” Bruce asked instead, turning to Natasha.

“Yes. And yes, I did really freeze for seventy years. Not something I want to do twice,” she said. “The serum put me in suspended animation instead of the cold just killing me.” She turned her hands over and stared at them. “Hell of a shock waking up here and now. I startled SHIELD when I broke out of their facility in New York and ran barefoot into Times Square before I realized when I was.”

Bruce’s eyes got wide with respect, and scientific interest. But he restrained himself from saying anything. And probably not just because Natasha had been checking out her guns. “And Thor, Tony, what about you?”

Clint was eager to hear that tale too. Tony had been a rich, smart playboy who made the world’s best weapons, had been kidnapped (and presumed dead, to be honest) for three months, and then had come roaring out of the desert with the new crazy hammer and a complete change of attitude. How did that fit in with this Thor guy? The armor looked like something Tony might make, but Thor had been talking with authority about the Destroyer and its origins.

Thor grinned and launched into a story like it was an epic saga, telling the story of a prince of Asgard and a scientist of Midgard, with arrogance and trials and seeking to atone for what they had done had lead them on similar paths. But how it was the Midgardian who’d ended up with the Asgardian hammer, while the Asgardian instead used the knowledge of Asgard to help the Midgardian form armor for him. 

“And together, they both of them chose to fight injustice and cruelty all across Midgard, and beyond if need be,” Thor concluded. 

Tony, who had been oddly silent the whole time, finally said, “I could tell the story, but I don’t tell it half as well as he does. That’s it in an epic nutshell, really.”

Clint had gotten over his sleepiness during Thor’s story, absentmindedly drinking down the Gatorade Bruce had given him while listening to the half-unbelievable tale. But how was that any weirder than Natasha’s story? Or his?

“Hey, storytime’s over boys and girls,” Tony said, turning back to the control panel as it cheeped at him. “We’re here.”


	4. Chapter 4

The Helicarrier did not fail to impress, a floating behemoth held up with roaring engines larger than some small towns, with air-masked technicians and pilots tethered on running safety lines as they tended to different aircraft secured to the deck. Inside, it was even more advanced, the space more generous than a sea-going vessel, the corridors large enough to not induce claustrophobia, the main command deck looking like something out of a science fiction movie, with screens and floating holographs allowing the dozens of agents to tend to their duties in style. Despite the bustle and the fact that everyone was armed, Clint didn’t feel the reflexive wariness that had become part of his life for so long. Maybe because it was the lack of the usual military uniforms, or the fact that while no one was obviously running ahead and clearing the corridors, no one was giving him the side-eye of “I wonder how fast I can put a bullet in this guy’s brain?” No ostentatious, or even subtle, guards around him. People were _looking_ at him, so he wasn’t being deliberately ignored, but they were also looking at Tony and Thor, Natasha and Bruce too. Even Steve, though that was with more respect and familiarity. The glances were neither hostile nor cheerily welcome, but just reserved and respectful.

Clint hadn’t felt respected by people at large in a while.

They were meeting on the command deck, at a huge round table right behind the commander’s station. Standing there when they arrived was a woman maybe a few years older than Natasha, fit and strong, dark hair pulled back in a no-nonsense knot, her uniform similar to Steve’s, with a quiet SHIELD logo on her shoulder.

“Director Hill,” Steve said, nodding. She turned around and looked at each of them in the eyes before gesturing to the table. 

“Stark, Banner, the lab’s that way if you want to-” Hill didn’t even get the rest of her statement out before Tony and Bruce exchanged a look and popped out of their seats to the lab visible through the glass wall behind them. 

“It’s been a while since he’s had a real lab,” Clint said. He shot a look at Natasha and stopped trying to slouch. This wasn’t the Army. He didn’t need to slump and hide his profile from cameras, at least for now.

“I figured. Barton, thank you for helping with the Destroyer.”

“What was I supposed to do? Just let it burn up Canada?”

“I know this wasn’t your first choice of life path,” she said, and that actually made Clint smile a little. “But that’s not what we’re here for. Let me show you what happened up here. Stark and Banner are getting a similar play-back in their lab.”

A screen dropped down from the ceiling, and a scene of security footage started playing. It started with a long shot of the Destroyer, along with accompanying audio of people watching it approach, trying to warn it off, firing warning shots, and finally firing shots meant to destroy the unknown bogey. The hits did nothing more than deflect it slightly, and the Destroyer abruptly flew in right to one of the firing turrets. The scene switched to inside as the walls cracked, some people getting crushed or sucked out, others clinging to parts of the room desperately.

“In the name of Loki, King of Asgard, where are the Avengers?” it thundered, the voice metallic and loud enough to hurt people’s ears, judging by the wincing on tape. When no one answered in a way it liked, it pushed its way further in, making another person lose their grip and go flying out into the sky. It focused on the remaining agents, a peculiar green light coming from some device clamped to its shoulder and back. The sound went wonky for several long minutes, and one of the agents’ mouths was seen working as his eyes stared dully. The Destroyer finally stood, then leaned forward and plucked every one of the remaining agents from their perches and threw them out the hole it had created. Then it turned and blasted away.

The Hulk stirred in Clint’s subconscious, and he thought very fiercely, _when we find who’s responsible for this, we are going to smash them so hard._ The Hulk gave a wave of fierce assent, and Clint was able to turn his attention back to the others. The others looked very grim, Director Hill most of all as she split the screen so Bruce and Tony could be seen from the lab.

_“Damn. Who sent the death-package? I don’t think it was Loki, no matter what the Destoyer said. My memories of him don’t exactly have him going in for direct confrontations like this. Also, never even met the guy personally, and the rest of you he doesn’t know from Adam, so I have no idea why he’d want the rest of you or anyone in SHIELD dead. It’s not like the rest of you have any beef with Asgard or any other of the Nine Realms.”_

“Indeed, this does not have the stamp of my brother’s work,” Thor said thoughtfully.

“Expand on that?” Steve prompted.

“Loki,” Thor said, “my brother is known for his cunning, intelligence, and clever words. He is a skilled magician as well as a warrior, but when in battle, he is far more subtle than this. He would be more likely to concoct a ruse to have us fight and eliminate each other, had that been his aim.”

_“Yeah,” Bruce said softly. “If whoever is behind this wanted us dead, finding something to set off Clint and then making sure all of you were nearby… Maybe Tony could have given the Hulk a run for his money, but Thor, even you wouldn’t last long against him. No offense.”_

“Having seen him in the flesh, I doubt it not,” Thor said, nodding at Clint.

Clint could only shrug. It was a sound tactic, and had it been someone other than him, it would have been an easy call to make. Much better to have your enemies eliminate each other.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t want to go up against him either. Ever caught a baseball thrown by a professional without a mitt? I felt something like that even through Mjölnir’s haft when I hit the Destroyer after the Hulk tossed him up. A punch straight from him would definitely not make my day. Your boy’s got talent, Banner.”

 _“…thanks, I think,” Bruce said, raising an eyebrow._

“I’m _right here_ ,” Clint said, but he didn’t mind them talking over him. At least he knew they gave a crap.

“More importantly, the Destroyer has no ability to extract information. It is like an attack dog. You tell it of its target, and it destroys it. It does not bargain and threaten and read thoughts,” Thor said. “Nor would my brother announce it, I think. If he truly desired our destruction, and had planned it out as he does all things, he would have wished to see the fruits of his labor.” He waved his gauntleted hand. “We are alone.”

“Are we?” Natasha asked. Steve raised an eyebrow, but nodded.

“We didn’t have overwatch for this mission, no,” he said.

“Heimdall could have found us from Asgard with no need to use Midgardian sources,” Thor said. “If there was anyone of Asgard directly involved.”

In the background of the lab cam, Bruce carefully separated something from the main mass of melted electronics, compared it to something on another screen, and brought Tony over to look. _“These look like…”_ he trailed off, then locked eyes with Clint, _“sonic cannons, but modified. Ross tried to use some of those against Clint.”_

Clint breathed in and out through his nose, nodding tersely. His memories of being the Hulk were always very foggy and fragmented, but he remembered the sounds that had nearly flattened him at Culver College.

 _“They’re supposed to be non-lethal crowd control, but there were some theories if you could focus them, certain sound waves could be used for a lot more versatile purposes. Most of which would have been banned by the Geneva Convention, which is why the sonic cannons were shelved,”_ Bruce said, looking like he was trying very hard not glare at Tony when this was clearly a surprise to everyone.

 _“Stark Industries_ did _shelve them. Ross pulled out a bunch of experimental crap after he raided the black-bag budget when he was trying to run down Bruce and Clint. Pepper about melted people’s ears off when we saw our stuff on the Culver College footage. Thing is, is this Ross?”_ Tony asked.

Bruce very reluctantly shook his head. _“How could he have known about Loki? Or you, Tony? Or any of the rest of you?”_

_“Not to put too fine a point on it, but I haven’t exactly been keeping a low profile. I’ve kept Mjölnir out of my public appearances, but that’s about it. Now, for Mr. Black-Ops, here, that’s another story.”_

Steve just gave Tony a _look_. “My public profile is best by being non-existent.” 

“Someone knows about Asgard, enough to get one of its weapons out of storage, and enough about us to get our location just as we’re assembling. This is more than just wanting to break us up, this is an opening salvo of war,” Natasha said.

“Then we need lines of communication open,” Hill said, and looked at Thor. “Is there a way to get to Asgard?”

Thor looked at Tony, who set Mjölnir on the lab table with a heavy metallic _thud_. _“Yeah, there is. Get us back on the ground, and let’s go see what the king has to say.”_

“What about that tech?” Steve asked. “If we already have sonic mind-control on the table, it would be really damn useful to know who has their hands on that. No one who has that is going to stop using it.”

 _“Baseline is Stark Tech, but it’s definitely been modified, and whoever did it was no slouch. I can think of a half-dozen names off the bat to check,”_ Tony said with confidence. _“And I can have a countersignal made within a couple hours. Until then, use earplugs._

“Give the names to me,” Hill said. “We’ve had a few other incidents world-wide that now suddenly make a lot more sense. I’ll get Fury, Coulson, and May to spearhead the teams to check out your possibles while you’re abroad.”

“Steve mentioned those,” Natasha said quickly, seeing the way Hill shifted meant she was about to turn them loose. And they hadn’t gotten nearly enough answers yet. “What incidents?”

“Taken separately, small glitches. Operatives gone rogue. Double agents turned triple. By the time Rogers had them pegged as something more coordinated and less typical than our usual suspects, well, we had more things to worry about.” She made a small wave at Thor and Tony and Clint. 

“But now what were anomalies suddenly make sense,” Steve said, picking up the thread. “What had been audio interference or something else that could be explained away now fits.”

“With Stark and Dr. Banner’s counter-signal for us to stop any further uses of that tech, we need you all to check out Asgard and figure out who’s trying to start a war between worlds,” Hill said decisively. 

“Why all?” Natasha said, watching Hill closely. Steve, at least, would outwardly be of much better use here.

“Because if someone comes for us again, best we not be here,” Clint said flatly.

Hill’s nod let him know he was right on target. “So, get off my planet. And see if the king of Asgard has any answers for us.”

\---

When the cascade of rainbow light and wind had finally left them standing on a golden floor in a room that looked like the inside of a Faberge egg, Natasha made sure to stand as straight as she could, nodding to the golden-eyed man unsheathing a huge sword from the center of the room.

She would not be intimidated by anyone, not even interdimensional gatekeepers from another dimension. Also she would definitely not lose her lunch on Asgard’s golden floor.

“Heimdall!” Thor said cheerfully, his faceplate popping open. “Long has it been since I’ve seen you, my friend.”

“And longer since I’ve seen you.” Though Heimdall’s voice was resonant and deep, it still sounded somewhat faint. Possibly because Tony was standing just to Thor’s side, casually tossing Mjölnir from hand to hand, and whistling. Her eyebrows raised a moment later as she realized the tune was, “It’s a Small World, After All.”

Even though it had been written after her time she had heard that song far too much after some well-meaning SHIELD agent took her on a tour of the country that had included a stint at all the major theme parks. Unfortunately she couldn’t kick Tony from this angle. 

Rogers looked like he was utterly unaware of Tony, but that was part of his job. Banner was either ignorant, or a really good actor. Barton was desperately trying to not laugh.

“Indeed,” Heimdall said finally. “Things have been interesting here since you left--”

“’Interesting’ isn’t the word for it,” Tony said. “I ended up with this lovely lady,” he patted Mjölnir fondly, “instead of Thor here, _he_ ended up joining me in a new job, both of us got recruited by Super Spy and a frozen national icon, picked up a pair of fugitives who can give all of us a run for our money, and then we get blindsided by an Asgard vault guardian who engaged in a little recreational murder and mind-reading before dropping by to try to kill us. Oh, and he did it in your king’s name.”

Tony just raised an eyebrow to punctuate the sentence, waiting for Heimdall to make the next move.

“The king is waiting for you. The answers you seek are his, not mine.”

“And my father?” Thor asked, his voice a little softer.

“Still sleeps. It has been long since he has been in the Odinsleep,” Heimdal said. “Your mother watches over him. And your brother has been ruling aptly.” Heimdal paused, and then looked over at everyone else. “There is transportation waiting for you outside.” He gestured to the glittering rainbow road that lead from the chamber, and Natasha could just see a glimpse of blue sky and fantastical golden buildings outside. Banner was looking antsy, though Barton less so. Maybe being in a place so big felt less confining for the Hulk. She shot a glance at Rogers, and he started to move them out, her following a breath behind. This place had protocol, and they already had violated it by merely existing, she suspected. Natasha was not going to risk an incident on another world, nor intruding in on Thor’s family questions.

“Have we done something to anger him?” Thor asked, his voice echoing down the chamber tunnel.

“Not you,” Heimdall said, and then his voice faded away to a murmur. Tony stomped out a second later, subsiding his irritation into interest as he saw the red and gold winged… open-topped planes? that were apparently their transport. He jumped into one, his hands moving slowly at first over the controls, and then with sudden confidence.

“Come on,” he said, waving them in. “Between Mjölnir’s help and their very nicely intuitive interface, I can have us to the palace in no time.”

Natasha looked over at the bewildering array of buttons, flashing panels, incomprehensible labels, glowing floating shapes, and hovering bits of metal, back up at Tony, and sighed.

“Tony,” Banner said, shaking his head, “when you have an automatically-translating Asgard-to-  
English dictionary in your head…”

“-I could still outfly you,” Tony said without missing a beat. “But I dearly look forward to you proving me wrong, later.” 

Rogers turned his head away to hide a bit of a smirk. Thor emerged from the Bifrost gateway a moment later, looking solemn, and sat down beside the others without a word. 

“Let us go. We have much to discuss with my brother.”

\---

“I don’t see much family resemblance,” Rogers murmured, sotto voce so as not to be overheard by any of the Asgardian court.

Natasha didn’t say anything in response, but she agreed with him. Loki was built on much more slender lines than his brother, far more lithe and fox-faced, clean-shaved with long dark hair. Despite the armor and elaborate helmet, he didn’t look like nearly as much of a fighter as Thor. But if what Thor had told them was true, between Loki’s magic and the weapons of Asgard, he didn’t need to be.

“Well met, brother. I see Midgard has been kind to you,” Loki said. His voice gave away nothing.

“But Asgard has not. What of the Destroyer?” Thor demaned, his armor flashing under the throne room’s lights. They’d all been given Asgardian court dress before being allowed into the throne room, and Thor was in something that must have been close to his princely armor before he’d been exiled. Natasha could see where the design for the Iron Man armor had come from.

“Not sent by my hand or will,” Loki said. He tapped his staff twice on the ground, and the crowd of courtiers abruptly filed out, leaving them alone. “I would have alerted you to the theft from the vaults, brother, but things had become rather complicated.”

Tony scowled darkly as Loki’s eyes slid over to him. “Sorry to rain on your parade, but Mjölnir made the choice, not me. If you’ve had tall, dark, and golden-eyed spying on my every move since Afghanistan, then you damn well knew where to drop a letter, Fresh Prince.”

“What theft?” Barton asked urgently, his voice skipping over a chuckle. Likely that was another reference to add to the list.

“The Destroyer itself. Which would not have gone, if someone had not had the means to move it, then take it over.” Loki pointed his staff at the floor between them, and an image of the vault appeared, strange artifacts in alcoves, some glowing, some floating, with the Destroyer at the end of the room, solid and implacable. And then it glowed blue as a perfect circle appeared, sucking it through backwards into a void, a brilliant pale blue that left Natasha’s face bloodless.

“The cube,” she whispered, and Loki looked up sharply. 

“The woman out of time,” he said, nodding. Another gesture with the staff, and an image of a glowing blue cube appeared, floating in mid-air. “The Tesseract. It had been hidden on Midgard for many centuries. Until _your_ time. Then it was lost again, until the Destroyer was taken.”

Rogers was looking at her sharply, but Natasha would have to explain later. “Why couldn’t you find it?!”

“Things such as that defy finding. They sometimes have minds of their own. You know just a fraction of its power. Its wielder is unknown to me.” It seemed to pain him to admit the last.

“The Tesseract? That… holy crap, Dad _worked_ on that thing. That’s what Red Skull was using to fuel Hydra tech,” Tony said. “I thought you dumped it in the ocean.”

“I _did,_ ” Natasha said tersely. “It was too powerful for any person to have, and if it hadn’t dropped right through the deckplates of the Valkyrie I would have probably chucked it in myself.”

“Back up,” Rogers said, palms out. “Forget this Tesseract thing for a minute. How did whoever has it on Earth know about Asgard, the Destroyer, the vaults, and _you?_ Why tell everyone it was doing everything in your name?”

“One of your people?” Banner asked.

“Possible. More interesting to me is that it declared its intentions and forced information out of those who would have refused. The Destroyer was adaptable and self-repairing, but it does not speak, has no will, and cannot control the mind.”

“That, we figured.” Tony said. “Someone co-oped some of my tech, then added their own twist. We’ve got a few names we’re running down.”

“It also narrows our suspects. The crossover between who knows enough about the Asgardian vaults to get out its protector, and _only_ that--” Natasha said. 

“Nothing else was taken? You don’t break into the local equivalent of Fort Knox and not take any gold,” Clint said, shaking his head.

“No one would care to know that more than I,” Loki said. “But why attempt to start some conflict with Midgard? You offer little challenge.”

Tony looked ready to jump in at that, but the last thing they needed was to get into a pissing match with the ruler of Asgard. Luckily Barton broke in before Natasha had to intervene.

“ _Did_ offer little challenge,” Barton said. The others turned to look at him. “Between all of us, we took down something I don’t think the Army could have even dealt with. That’s no damn coincidence. It wanted us dead, and if we’d happened to be somewhere populated, I don’t think it would have even hesitated about casualties.”

“There must be some way to see if someone has left Asgard for Earth other than Thor, or if someone communicated with someone here,” Steve said. His fingers flexed, and Natasha knew he was itching for a way to connect to the Asgardian databases, anything to get the answers they needed. 

“Then allow me to scry. There are ways of seeing into the past that I can invoke – they are not done lightly or easily, but it is clear this had moved beyond just the concern of Asgard. I will call for your return when I have managed to find what I can.”

\--

Loki’s guards guided them to several side chambers, warning them that it would be several hours before Loki could complete his work. Tony was examining some Asgardian… something-or-other in one of the outer chambers, a thing of hovering bits of metal and light that moved in strange patterns. Natasha wasn’t sure if it was a scientific device or a child’s toy, only that it was well out of her range of knowledge. Bruce had pulled Steve aside for an intense discussion while Clint was hovering nearby, putting in a pointed comment every few moments. Whatever they were talking about, it didn’t look like an argument, and Natasha let them be. Likely both of them had a lot of questions for Steve about SHIELD, and he was by far the best to answer them, despite his secrecy that had to be a reflex by now. But Thor had gone to a balcony overlooking a garden below, and Natasha joined him. She wasn’t likely to get a view like this many times in her life, even as strange a life as it had been.

“They have much to discuss, all to the better, I think,” Thor said, nodding in the general direction of Clint and the others.

“They deserve answers. Both of them have been working without a net for too long,” Natasha said. Steve was likely a fantastic liar when he had to be, he couldn’t have been what he was without that skill, but here, out of the range of any Earth surveillance, she hoped he could drop his habitual caution and get Bruce and Clint all the answers they needed.

“This journey, it is likely to mean something very different at the end, for all of us. Like Clint said, our power has been acknowledged. Soon more than our enemies will know.”

“And everything will change,” Natasha said, leaning on the balcony next to him. 

“We are all changed. Tony is… changed,” Thor said, looking out over the balcony meditatively. “He went through great tribulations in his captivity, and that would be enough to make any man or woman change their outlook. If Mjölnir had not chosen him, and if he had survived, I believe eventually he would have conceived of this armor and power source on his own, and used it to rectify the wrong in the world. But he was indeed found worthy, and changed in other ways.” Thor looked at his hand, and drew the dagger at his side. Of all of them, he looked most at home in the vaguely medieval clothing and weapons they’d been offered to wear. He scored his arm lightly through the gaps in his armor before Natasha could protest, and beads of blood welled up.

“When I was cast from Asgard, I was stripped of the powers of my people, not just of Mjölnir, but the abilities of any Aesir. The flesh of my people is dense, and a normal Midgard blade or projectile would not bother us in the slightest. We have the All-Speech, and can understand any language spoken, and be understood in return. And we live a very long time. I had not kept close track of what was happening on Midgard when I was young, but from what I do remember, and why my friend Jane Foster had determined, I am over a thousand of your years old. Maybe far older than that, but the calendars of Asgard don’t correlate well with Midgard. And now I find myself as a Midgardian. Blades cut, bullets hurt, even a skilled fist or something as simple as a taser can lay me low. There are tongues I do not know on Midgard, and now in coming back to Asgard, find I cannot understand some of my own people. And I know I will grow old, that I will age and die in what will be the twinkling of an eye for my brother, my mother, my father.”

Natasha would have found Thor’s explanation unbearably sad if he hadn’t been so calm, so matter-of-fact. She knew he was a man of great passion, but for other things, he took a long view that betrayed his real age.

“All of this I learned when I realized Mjölnir was in the hands of another, and all that I no longer had, I mourned for and was able to eventually let go. Then, I met Tony. And realized he had gained what had changed in me. I do not say lost, for I have received gifts as a Midgardian I would have not been able to as an Aesir. But Tony doesn’t always understand what has happened to him. He is mighty and strong, very hard to hurt, but Mjölnir has also planted within him some of the knowledge given to any Aesir, taken from my memories so that he would understand who had chosen him, and why. He is very different, physically, emotionally, and mentally. Not that any of this has made him less. Indeed, I think it has made him a great deal better as a person. But very few around him understand what has happened to him.”

“I think we might,” Natasha said. She looked at Thor sideways, and took off one of the decorative sashes on her dress, prompting him to turn towards her as she wrapped the slight wound on his arm. “All of us have been changed, for a lot of reasons.”

“And that is why this initiative, this gathering of heroes, will work. We have much in common. I even think that in some ways, I am the opposite of you.”

She looked up at him, and raised an eyebrow of inquiry. 

“You had determination and heart, but not much power, and were given it to protect your people. I had great power, and used it at the end for my own pride. It was taken from me, and I had to learn humility and compassion, and find a new way to protect the people I had come to care for. It is a journey I don’t think I would wish on anyone-.”

“But you’re glad it happened to you anyway,” Natasha said, putting her hand back on his arm, above the bandage. Thor put his hand over hers lightly, covering it completely. Having seen what Tony could do, she could guess that Thor must have been utterly terrifying with Mjölnir at his side. 

“Yes. I believe fate drew me here.”

“I’m starting to believe in fate,” Natasha said. “I wake up from something that should have killed me only to find out that the Cube is suddenly active? If I didn’t see something at work there, I’d be an idiot.”

“And you are not that, Natasha,” Thor said. “You are our inspiration. And my friend.” He leaned down and took her hand, gently kissing the back of it. She kept ahold of his hand for another moment, then slowly let go, the heat of it lingering.

“When things get a little less hectic, let’s talk about that some more,” she said. It had been a very long time since 1945. And longer than that since she’d had the freedom to think of more than survival.

“I would care for that very much.” He tilted his head back towards the doors as one of the attendants opened them. “Let us see if the searches have borne fruit.”

\--

“What are we looking at?” Steve demanded.

“A viewing of the past. It seems the Tesseract was within a Midgard facility for quite some time.” Loki’s voice was calm as he stretched out his hands over a pool of water that had appeared in the throne room since they had left.

Shadowy images swam in the bottom of the pool, and Steve pressed his lips together. “I know that place, more by reputation than anything else. It’s a top-secret communications array parked out in the desert in New Mexico.”

“Someone was experimenting with it, attempting to withdraw power from it, as it had been before.”

“Replicating Schmidt and Zola’s weapons,” Natasha said, with venom in her voice.

“However, at a recent point, the experiments became a great deal more focused. The power was being withdrawn for something more specific. Around that time, the Destroyer was taken. It was taken some months before the six of you all met.”

“That’s disconcerting,” Bruce muttered.

“There were patterns to the power, and though I can’t track the Tesseract directly, I can track how the power flows. See here.” Loki twisted his hand, and lines of glowing blue threaded up into the outline of a vaguely humanoid figure with a glowing blue heart…

“Someone was making blueprints,” Tony said decisively. He blinked once, and then said, “Oh, man.”

“If they were making copies of the Destroyer…” Natasha said, appalled at the idea of a legion of those things on Earth.

“They succeeded, because they sent the Destroyer after us. Which means what they have isn’t quite as strong, or isn’t ready yet, but they have all the information they need. They just couldn’t wait to field-test. Or they wanted to make sure people wouldn’t be looking to Earth for the source of the problem,” Bruce said.

“How, though? If this thing and the person were in a SHIELD facility, they still have to be getting in supplies to make their destroyer-bots. That stuff doesn’t come cheap,” Clint pointed out.

“Have you ever _seen_ SHIELD’s budget?” Steve said.

“…right. Anyway--”

“How did whoever did this know about the Destroyer at all?”

“Because during their experimentation, they found the true purpose of the Tesseract,” Loki said. “It is meant to transport things, to pierce the walls between worlds. Including Asgard. They were able to contact someone here who told them.”

“Who?”

Loki looked over at Thor, his expression suddenly softening. “Your exile was hard on many, you realize. Some never got over your absence.”

“Who?” Thor demanded.

Loki nodded to one of the distant guards, and he returned in a moment with a woman in armor, her hands shackled in front of her in elaborate gold-colored manacles. Her long dark hair was tied back tightly, and her expression could have been carved from stone. When she caught sight of Thor, she blanched, and Thor looked stricken. 

“Lady Sif,” Loki said, very gently. 

Tony’s expression said very clearly, _oh shit_ , and he leaned over to give a quick whispered explanation of, “One of Thor’s closest friends before he was exiled.” 

Oh shit indeed.

“Why?” Thor asked, taking a few steps towards her, but stopping himself abruptly. “Sif, what would possess you to do this?”

Loki just looked at her, not willing to give her any relief, and she finally caught Thor’s eyes. “You left us.”

“It was my own fault, my own arrogance. My father was right to punish me so,” Thor said, his eyes glistening with tears. “I tried to do something unforgivable.” 

“Why couldn’t you find Mjölnir again? Why did you stop trying to get home? You know how dangerous that power could be in the hands of a Midgardian.”

Tony’s mouth opened, and Bruce put a hand on his wrist and shook his head. As Natasha had expected, that didn’t stop him. “Lady, I know in ways I didn’t even know were possible before a few years ago. I’ve been trying to stop violence, not give some guys on Earth blueprints to a nearly-indestructible death machine.”

Sif shot him a hate-filled glare. “And before that? You reveled in death. In your hands, we could have seen Mjölnir battering down the gates of Asgard.”

The insult stung, Natasha could tell, but Thor rallied quickly before Tony could speak. “Because she found Tony worthy and chose _him_ , not I, to wield her.” Unexpectedly, Thor took a few steps back and flung his arms around everyone, urging them forward. “My friend, my path on Midgard lead me to these people, each of whom is fighting for justice in their own way. We have all endured our trials of fire or ice, betrayal or exile, and I believe we were brought together by fate. We will avenge Midgard, if we must, from those who would see it destroyed.”

Sif looked down as Natasha could see the others standing straighter. “I… did not know. The ones I conversed with betrayed me, went back on the vows we swore. How was I to know your new friends wouldn’t do the same?”

“Who did you talk to?” Bruce asked. He stepped forward until he was a few feet from Sif, and Natasha could see Clint trying to edge forward without seeming too obvious. Manacled, guarded, or not, Sif was Aesir and could probably break Bruce with a single punch.

But apparently Sif had seen something in Thor and the other Avengers.

“One was a scientist who worked with the long-lost Tesseract. His name was Killian,” she said, barely looking up. “The other was a warlord, a general. His name was Ross.”

Bruce and Clint’s expression went fairly murderous, and Natasha didn’t blame them. Steve jerked his head slightly in surprise, and Tony looked furious. Ross. Despite his failure to capture Clint or Bruce, the man still had plenty of power within the government and the Army. She didn’t know how. She suspected blackmail. If Ross didn’t end up behind bars or worse after this, she was going to get Steve to find out why.

But the other name…

“Killian…” Tony said, shaking his head.

“Aldrich Killian?” Steve asked. “Advanced Idea Mechanics? He took some of SHIELD research contracts for weapons development when Stark Industries bowed out.”

“No good deed, or bad one, goes unpunished. I snubbed the hell out of him some dozen years back when I was drunk off my ass and he approached me with some wild theories. I barely remember that night, to be honest, but when AIM went public a few years ago, he did a nice, polite ‘screw you’ to me in public. Brought some of that back. That was right before Afghanistan.” Tony looked torn between embarrassment and anger. 

“And after, since Stark Industries stopped making weapons, AIM ended up getting real tight with some of SHIELD’s R&D,” Steve pointed out.

“Ross would sure like to work with someone who hated your guts, because that would get him what he wanted too,” Bruce said. 

“It seems that Asgard, in this cavalcade of villains, is little more than a convenient scapegoat for their ambitions,” Loki said thoughtfully. “A source of information and power, perhaps even a place to work, but more a distraction for you than anything else. They would likely need someplace out of Midgard to make enough of these Tesseract-fueled Destroyer-copies without being detected. That amount of power would draw too much attention. They could be brought to Midgard—”

“In numbers and force as soon as they’re ready with their endgame,” Natasha finished. 

“Which is… what?” Bruce asked.

“World domination?” Clint said sarcastically. Loki nodded, and Clint blinked at him. 

“They are working with the Tesseract. It tends to warp one’s view unless one has very exceptional protection.” His eyes slid over to Lady Sif for a moment. “If you are unprepared, it can turn your whole world inside out.”

“Is the Tesseract still on Earth? Can you tell that much?” Natasha demanded. Her heart sped up and her stomach sank. They’d gone from a walk to a sprint in a matter of seconds.

“I believe so. We of Asgard will try to find where they are building these copies.”

“And we shall find the Tesseract and those abusing it. If they attempt to open a pathway, it will be obvious, yes?” Thor said, looking over at everyone else.

“Now that we know what we’re looking for, plain as the sun in the sky,” Tony said. “Damn, we need to get back, now.”

“Heimdall is ready for you,” Loki said, as the images in the pool subsided into nothingness again. As everyone was filing out as quickly as they could, Loki called out, “Best of luck, brother!”


	5. Chapter 5

Director Hill could handle damn near anything, from Asgardian runes being burned into the deck of the Helicarrier, to the very unwelcome news that sonic mind control was only the tiniest part of the shitstorm about to be unleashed somewhere on Earth by people whom she had employed.

“I’ve got every search algorithm you specified going across every SHIELD site, satellite, and lab. We’re pinging some possibles off the Eastern Seaboard right now, so the Helicarrier is rerouting that way as we speak. Soon as we get a pinpointed position, you six are on a Quinjet and gone to stop this thing before it starts. Go suit up, I don’t think it’s going to be long.” 

\--

“This way.” Natasha lead the way into a room not far from the hangar bay, this one lined with lit, Plexiglass-fronted cases. Thor’s armor stood in one, the chest reactor glowing softly. Natasha’s red, white, and blue uniforms were displayed in another. There were more, each one labeled with a name in the Avenger Initiative, each one full of selections of armor, weapons, and tools. Clint moved to the one with his name on it, touching the ID panel next to it in reverence. The cover _whooshed_ up to give him access to the sniper rifle, the varied ammunition, the scopes, tripod, gauges, and other accessories of a sniper’s kit. It was very unlikely that they’d need a sniper for what they knew was coming, but Clint’s shoulders relaxed just getting his hands on the gear. There was an irony not lost on anyone that the towering rage monster inside Clint could be quelled by instruments of death. He checked everything over, then set is aside with a sigh of satisfaction. Next to the rifle case was an armor stand, a vest on it in the same deep purple as Clint’s old squadron, with a subtle “A” patch on one shoulder.

“Not much need for this,” Clint said, shaking his head. “Even when the Hulk’s not in the driver’s seat, he keeps me whole no matter what.”

“Whether he likes it or not,” Bruce muttered, too soft for Clint to hear across the room, but audible enough to Natasha. He looked haunted when he said it, and Natasha didn’t need it spelled out how lonely and desperate both of them must have gotten during their time on the run.

“You have combat experience, and if you can get the Hulk to stay down if the vest takes a hit, that’s one less Incident for you,” Steve said. Clint turned to look at him, surprised. “We’ll need him from time to time, but if Dr. Banner is needed to shut down whatever device they’re using to open the Tesseract, then we’d like you to have options on how you want to protect people.”

Clint started and stopped a half-dozen times, trying to find words. After gaping like a fish for a few moments, he finally got out, “I get a choice?”

“We aren’t General Ross,” Natasha said, speaking the name with distaste. She’d had her fill of the arrogant general within one minute of meeting him, back when she’d first thawed out. He reminded her of some of the worst people she’d met in the war, particularly when she’d been playing a secretary and had seen them at their most arrogant. “You know what’s coming. You seem like someone who wants to help, rather than hide.”

Clint grabbed the vest with steady hands, and turned to Dr. Banner, beaming.

“We’ve got you covered, Doc,” Tony said, getting a gleeful gleam in his eye as Bruce opened up his own compartment. There was a quiver of unusual size, bristling with enough arrows to take down the expected army of nasties, and the bow had buttons on the grip to let him select the type at will without having to fumble for them. Slightly tinted glasses to protect his precious eyes, and a full suit of protective gear, cut for maximum mobility, in a green slightly reminiscent of the hunting camouflage he used to wear, and a protected Starkphone in a shatterproof case rode on his hip, along with other compact survival supplies.

“If that phone has anymore bells and whistles, you’ll jingle all the way downtown,” Tony said with pardonable smugness. “It’s connected to a secure mainframe I designed, so you have all the tools you need on the road.”

Bruce looked at the protective suit, cut to allow his arms free movement, and took a shaky breath. “You didn’t have to do all of this.”

He meant that, Natasha could tell. He hadn’t expected that they would take any steps to protect him.

“We want to protect you, Doctor. We’re not doing this without you. We need you,” Natasha said, catching his eyes and holding them. “And we’ll need you to watch our backs too. You can do that better if you don’t always have to worry about you every second.”

Clint was grinning on the other side of the room, shrugging into his new vest, then pausing as he caught his arm in the armhole. He took a closer look, and started laughing.

“Would you believe me if I say I’ve muscled up since the Army?”

Natasha laughed and went to readjust Clint’s vest, while Steve took over getting Bruce into his gear. She pulled a few tabs to give him some more room, settling it against his shoulders before he zipped himself up.

“I had to do this myself a few times,” she confessed. “The costumers for the war bond show looked at my face and just assumed my size. The girls and I had to re-stitch half of our costumes so we wouldn’t get accused of indecency. I thought that wouldn’t happen now but…” She nodded at the most brightly-colored of her costumes. “That’s my ‘action figure’ costume, the one I wear if I’m doing public appearances. The first version… Saying it was painted on would have been too generous.”

Clint chuckled, because Natasha’s combat uniform, the one she’d worn in Canada, was still stylized, but definitely practical armor, not something to be marketed as a child’s toy (or an adult’s dream).

Bruce was getting used to the weight and movement of his vest. Steve made sure there wasn’t anything that was going to scratch or catch or irritate, because they didn’t know how long it was going to take to stem the tide of what was coming.

“All right?” Steve said finally, thumping Bruce on the shoulders to be certain nothing was going to move.

“Yeah,” Bruce said, breathing out slowly.

“I’ve only really been wearing armor for the past six-seven years,” Steve said suddenly. “Before then, I was rocking a pocket protector. It takes some getting used to, but we made sure this was custom-made for you.”

“I don’t know if I can picture you in a pocket protector.”

“You didn’t see him when he was spying on my house,” Tony broke in. “Dressed down as a dweeb accountant. By the way, Doc, that phone should be able to take just about anything. Up to and including Thor stepping on it in armor.”

“Which we tested,” Thor said, smiling. “You have acquitted yourself well as a warrior, friend Bruce. Now you have the armament of one as well.”

Bruce didn’t protest that this was something he hadn’t wanted. It had started out that way with him, but now… He was a lifetime away from a boy who had hunted in the woods, and his bow was no longer just a way to spare himself pain, but to protect the people in his care. And that circle had just widened to more than just Clint or Betty. Now there was a city somewhere below him who was waiting for help they couldn’t get from anyone else.

“I think I’m ready.”

“I know you are,” Thor said, and pointed a small square of metal at his armor. With a few mechanical whirrs, it opened, and he stepped inside, the armor folding around him, leaving his face exposed for now.

Tony thunked Mjölnir on the deck as he shrugged into a flexweave Stark vest, one Steve recognized from one of the pitch videos at SHIELD.

“I thought you were already bulletproof,” Clint said. “No, scratch that, I _know_ you are.”

“I am, at least against regular stuff. But my clothes aren’t. And as fun as it would be to save the world in the buff, Cap won’t let me do it.”

Natasha flipped Tony the bird without a blush. 

Steve held out his hand, four small irregular lumps of plastic rolling in his palm. “Earwigs. I want everyone communicating. Tony, the one with the gold stripe is for you-.”

“I know, I designed it,” Tony said flippantly, jamming the offered communication device into his right ear. “Had to make sure it could withstand some high amperage.” 

“Check?” Natasha said.

“Check.”

“Check.”

“Check.”

“Check.”

“Check,” with metallic overtones from Thor’s synthesized voice through the mask.

 _“All right people, let’s go save D.C.”_ Maria Hill’s voice said suddenly.

“What?!” Bruce said, head coming up sharply. “I was sort of hoping Loki was joking…”

_“No such luck. Looks like Killian had the Tesseract moved to-- Rogers you’re going to love this --the labs at the Triskellion.”_

Rogers cursed in what sounded like four languages.

_“Hating it too. Looks like he’s powering up and about to unleash hell on the capital. If you can capture Killian and Ross alive for me to skin personally, I’d count it a favor. Quinjet is ready in the hanger, let’s go, go, go!”_

\--

The white buildings near the National Mall stood out against the greenery below like tombstones, and Bruce suppressed a shudder as the Quinjet began its descent. All the readings clearly pointed here, to the labs below the Triskellion and soon. If Killian had just been working with Earth technology, he would have needed a massive power source to open up the Tesseract’s portal. But with Sif inadvertently opening up some of the other realms to him, he had made his bridge without causing the ripples that would have alerted anyone to his presence sooner. They were just going to make it, and probably not in time to stop him before he started.

“Anything yet?” Steve called out from the front. He was piloting because Tony and Thor were going to have to be deployed first, and Steve would need the mobility to get to the Triskillion and see if he could get to Killian. Everyone else would be stopping D.C. from getting destroyed. Bruce hung onto the grab loop and took in as much as he could at a glance. Even warned, he nearly missed it at first, but after a few seconds, no one could have missed it. A lance of blue light was beaming out of the middle of the Triskellion. Glowing ripples were expanding along the banks of the Potomac River across the bank from the building, and from them were emerging gleaming bodies, like a horde of metallic ants. Even from this distance, Bruce could see they weren’t nearly as tall as the Destroyer, and they glowed blue instead of the inferno that had raged inside the Asgardian construct, but there were dozens, and more coming out every second. Thank God SHIELD had gotten the evacuation order out in advance of the Avengers’ arrival – it didn’t guarantee a clear field of fire, but the DC police were getting people moving away as fast as they could. As for the agents themselves, Bruce had to hope they had a better sense of self-preservation than the idiots Ross has sent after him and Clint.

“Across the bank, and incoming!” Bruce called, and held on tight as Steve spun the Quinjet in a tight arc.

“Thor, Tony, try to bottle them up so we can land!” Natasha called, and Bruce flattened himself against the wall as Thor blasted out of the door, Mjölnir and Tony following a second later. Clint was there a right after, rifle in his hands, watching the action below with single-minded intensity.

There was a series of bright explosions, the booms echoing around the river and reverberating off the monuments as a dozen of the metallic things blew up. Thor pulled out of his dive and blasted higher as Tony came in after him, lightning smiting the ground and taking out another wave. For a moment, there was no movement on the ground. Then Thor jerked in the air, and Tony wavered in his grip on Mjölnir as they stared down. In the blasted riverbank, the pieces of metallic rubble were glowing with blue energy, making spiderwebs of power that reached out to the pieces next to them, drawing them closer, in alignment…

“Sorcerer’s Apprentice!” Tony shouted. “These Destroyer-bots aren’t going to stay down!”

“We need to disable them and stop their advance while we try to close this gate,” Natasha said. “Steve, head for that portal device, Banner, cover us from the top of the Triskellion. Clint!” He whipped his head around to stare at her. “You and I are going to have to plug that gap from the ground while Thor and Tony do it from the air.”

Clint took a second look at the horde and put the rifle down easily, unstrapping his vest. He cracked his neck and loosened his shoulders, focusing on the chaos below. If there was ever a need for the overwhelming force of Clint’s alter-ego, this was it. “Got it, Cap.”

“Drop Bruce off then get to that portal machine, Rogers,” Natasha said, and flipped her bracers into position. Not into the upright diamonds to shield her from projectiles, but with the diamonds pointed out over her fists, to act as daggers. She intended to rip these tin cans open from top to bottom. 

“In five!” Steve said, and Natasha crouched, then sprung as the Quinjet neared the ground, a huge green roar and the thud of enormous feet behind her as they ran at the Destroyer-bots still struggling to pull themselves together. 

\--

The Hulk’s roar made Natasha’s bones shiver, but she couldn’t let that stop her. Her arms were aching and going numb as she ripped open one after the other, but she made herself move faster, block harder, keeping just ahead of the Hulk so he could keep the Destroyer-bots off her back. They had to press them back, keep the gap open long enough to force these things back into it, long enough for Steve to find the Earth-side controller that was keeping the gate open. And if they didn’t keep them hemmed in, then they were free to range wherever Ross and Killian had programmed them to go. Beyond the banks of the Potomac the rest of D.C. beckoned, and only the immediate area had been evacuated. There were hundreds of thousands of people in the crossfire if even one of these things passed the Avengers.

So not one of them could

Bruce was up on the top of the Triskellion, courtesy of Steve, raining down a careful selection of arrows to keep the worst of them off of Natasha and the Hulk’s back. None of them had thought to outfit his quiver with more of the expanding-foam crowd-control arrows, with was unfortunate because those were the most effective at keeping the Destoyer-bots contained. She heard him cursing as another pale blue blob bloomed in her peripheral vision, and knew before he said it that he was down to arrows that exploded or melted, which never seemed to keep them down for long.

“Rogers, where are we?” she demanded, winning another step forward as Thor landed by her side, going back-to-back to force another wave of ‘bots to give ground. His own arsenal was long depleted, his repulsor beams on low power by the dimmed glow in the chest of his armor. With a shout, he flipped something out of the right arm of his armor, a damned _sword_ of all things, and roared like a berserker, chopping heads and limbs left and right.

\--

Steve peered around the corner, seeing two slack-jawed agents standing in front of a door where blue light was shining from every crack. The Triskellion had been evacuated, but Steve had found evidence of Ross’ interference in more than one mind-melted former co-worker trying to kill him. He’d laid out six of them with shots from his Widower’s Bite as he’d worked his way down to this floor, and was still waiting for the other shoe to drop. Ross and Killian might have become so warped by working with an otherworldly power source that they were trying to take over D.C. with a robot army, but he couldn’t count on them being so stupid that they’d only leave a few guards to protect them. 

He slid a taser grenade down the floor, timing it carefully. He rushed in on a count of five, just as the remaining guards were flopping on the floor into unconsciousness. The electricity had also done double duty to disengage the lock -this wasn’t a secure floor, only offices- and Steve slammed through, ducking and rolling, coming up with shocker disks in each hand.

Sitting in the middle of the floor was machine about the size of a small car, its heart pulsing with power and throwing out an eye-smiting beam of blue through the shattered window. Next to it was the sharp-faced Killian, between him and the door was Ross in a disheveled dress uniform, both of their eyes a solid crystalline blue.

Steve hurled one shocker at the General, making him drop his sidearm and spasm on the floor, then vaulted over the machine to tag Killian. The scientist moved with surprising speed and strength, grabbing at his arm and trying to twist it in to give Steve a dose of his own medicine. Steve dropped the shocker without a second thought and went down, bringing Killian with him. Shifting, he scissored his legs around Killian and squeezed long enough to make the man let go in order to try to fight to breathe. Steve disengaged fast and punched down into Killian’s shoulder, making the man arch as his Widower’s Bite dug in and delivered its payload. In his uncontrolled flailing, Killian’s knee hit the loose shocker on the floor, and a rush of electricity blasted them both.

Steve’s vest was built to keep his weapons from being used against him, but he smelled scorched insulation, felt an instant of muscle-locking agony, then felt a deep, dangerous pain inside himself. Killian collapsed to the floor, mouth sagging open, lights out, and it was all Steve could do to keep from joining him. On the floor a few feet away a tactical radio squawked. Steve listened through surges of pain, then cursed.

\--

Through her earpiece, Natasha heard a series of grunts, a sizzling sound that sent a squeal of feedback through her earpiece, a few thuds, and finally Steve’s voice, breathless, saying, “I’ve got myself barricaded in the control room for now, but Killian and Ross have more human back-up on the way. I’ve got both of them unconscious and cuffed, but this machine is still going strong. I’ve got maybe two minutes, max, before I’m going to have to move position.”

There was another click on the line, one that heralded Steve switching to a private channel. “Cap, Killian didn’t go down easy, and I got sideswiped with my own shocker. My vest didn’t short-circuit all of it. I think it damaged my pacemaker.”

Natasha’s heart skipped a beat even as she pinned another ‘bot down and ripped off its head with one of her shields. Next to her, Thor was roaring and slashing with his sword, the head of a Destroyer-bot in his other hand as a makeshift shield. She had gotten used to seeing Steve as unflappable and invincible, even with watching him take all of his drugs and injections necessary to keep his unruly body on an even keel. “You can’t move position,” she said flatly.

“Oh, I can move. But not far, not fast, and if I take the adrenaline dose I have as back-up, I doubt the AED I have built into my vest is going to keep me from clocking out unless someone gets to me.”

Steve’s voice was so matter-of-fact, Natasha understood immediately. Tony’s plan was a good one, but they didn’t have time to make all the conditions perfect. Barton was going to hate this when he woke up.

“Time for Plan B.” The gap was as narrow as it was going to get, and however many ‘bots were on this side, they were just going to have to deal with. “Bruce, get to Rogers! Tony get to the gap, we’re going to have to plug it ourselves! Thor, we have to keep the perimeter contained, and I don’t care about monument damage right now. Hulk!”

The enormous green rage monster turned, spitting out the head of one Destructor-bot as he crushed another in his huge green fist. Natasha pointed to the shining blue gap bridging their world to where Killian’s machine was pouring out a stream of death from Asgard. “Smash!”

The Hulk actually _smirked_ and leapt so high and so far that he cleared the crowd of ‘bots in a single bound, landing with an earth-shaking thud near the gap as Tony thundered in. Both of them yelling, they smashed the gap itself, disrupting the energy flow between worlds, Tony using Mjölnir, Hulk just using his fists to smash at power so thick it manifested in physical form. Between them, they could act as a physical block against the power, as long as Steve could shut down the Earth-side AIM device. Natasha dug deep for her fourth or fifth wind as Thor punched with his ‘bot head and lashed out with his sword all around her, between them keeping the ‘bots hemmed in. For a moment, everything seemed to be working, the gap narrowing even more until it was just a bright blue line of light.

“Rogers, Banner, now, now, _now!_ ” she shouted. Over the comms, there was a curse from Rogers, and Natasha’s heart sank.

\--

Steve hadn’t felt this bad in five years, sweating, hands shaking, skin an unhealthy pallor, a weakness in his core he hadn’t experience since getting his health as right as he could. It was times like this that reminded him to be humble, that he was living on borrowed time every second. 

“Hit breakers two, three, seven, and twelve!” Bruce said over the comm, his voice sounding a little breathless as he was making his way down to Steve. He’d been walking Steve through disabling the device without blowing up the Eastern Seaboard for the past two minutes, but Steve’s vision kept blurring and there was someone pounding at the door he’d wedged shut. There was a nice little explosive surprise for when they finally forced it open, but at this point Steve wasn’t sure his damaged ticker was going to manage another shock. At least it would destroy this thing, if Steve failed.

“Bruce,” Steve said, and had to pause to take another breath. “Get here soon!”

\---

“Can’t hold it!” Tony shouted, and suddenly a gleam of white metal flew back past Natasha to points unknown. 

She shoved down another two ‘bots, and said reluctantly, “Was that Mjölnir?”

Tony didn’t answer, his attention caught up with trying to keep the gap shut with the Hulk’s help. The Hulk was roaring in pain, and Tony’s face was rigid with agony, but he was still holding on. He was, as Thor had said, different. And that made him strong enough to bear the load.

The ‘bots were slowing, some of them turning to look back at the portal, and Natasha heard the welcome lowering whine of the Earth-side device powering down. But the light from Asgard was still shining far too bright.

“The pressure is holding it open!” Thor shouted. “We need to get to the other side!”

“No one is going through that in one piece!” Tony gasped out. Then she saw him suddenly look surprised, and redoubled his efforts. “I can see through! Sif is there!”

“What?!” Thor shouted.

“She’s there! In chains, with a spear, making mince of everything from that side. Close it, guys, we need a heavy strike!”

The Hulk was more than happy to oblige, but Natasha could see that even with the Hulk’s boundless strength, they were going to need a boost. They could hold it, but they couldn’t finish it.

\---

Steve slumped over the machine gratefully as it powered down, and managed to keep from jumping out of his skin as Banner, and Mjölnir, arrived through the window at the same time. Banner landed gracefully at the end of a grappling-line arrow. Mjölnir thudded through the broken window, then the door door, taking the explosion and whoever had been near it down the hallway. Bruce blinked at that as Steve raised an eyebrow in surprise.

 _“…we need a heavy strike!”_ Natasha’s voice thundered over the comm, and Bruce ran towards the smoke and fire down the corridor. Steve cursed in six different languages and staggered to the door, only to see Bruce running back, smudged from the smoke and shedding a few robot parts, but clutching Mjölnir’s short handle. 

“I’ve got it! Incoming!” Bruce went straight to the blown-out wall, cocked his arm back, sighted on the brilliant spot of light on the bank of the Potomac, and threw the Asgardian artifact into the breech.

\---

Thor shouted in exultation, Tony in surprise, and the Hulk in anger as Mjölnir slammed into the thick light. There was a soundless explosion that sent Natasha’s legs out from underneath her and blacked out the world around her. For long moments afterward she didn’t quite feel ready to think, or open her eyes, or stand up. As there were no screams, cries for help, or anyone trying to kill her, she stayed lying down until Thor, sword reincorporated into his armor, limping slightly, came into her slitted field of vision. She found enough strength to raise her hand and grasp his outstretched one, levering her into a standing position. All around the banks of the Potomac were the collapsed and crushed bodies of the ‘bots, along with scorched grass and churned-up earth. Above, in the Triskellion, a shattered section of window about halfway up had two waving figures in it, one supporting the other.

 _“We’re good here. Natasha, you ok?”_ she heard Bruce say.

Tony came up behind Thor, Mjölnir in a loose grip in one hand, and the Hulk trailing along behind him, snorting as he looked left and right for enemies. Natasha turned to look at him, and smiled. “We won.”

The Hulk snorted again, and then sat down right in the dirt, body starting to shrink into one very woozy Clint Barton. He blinked at everyone and formed a weak thumbs-up before leaning back and quietly passing out.

“Yeah, we did,” Tony said, as Thor opened his faceplate with a smile.

\---

“I can’t believe he did this,” Natasha muttered.

“Yes, you can.” Steve crossed his arms, and took in the view of the mansion on a hill with appreciation. “You would probably know better than anyone.” Two months later and you couldn’t have told that he had been on borrowed time during the Battle of the Potomac. Amazing what modern medicine could do. Visiting Steve in the medical wing of a Maryland SHIELD facility she’d been able to appreciate how hard he’d been holding on during that fight; everyone had, really. If there had been any lingering ill-will from Steve’s initial deception, they’d been gone by the time he was out of danger.

Natasha was silent for a moment, just out of principle, then unbent enough to nod. “Yeah, Howard did things like this.”

“This” was Tony’s newest home, a mansion outside of New York City, more than spacious enough for everyone to have their own apartment, along with a generous (if not embarrassing) amount of room for training areas, labs, common rooms, storage, and vehicles.

“I’m standing right here,” Tony pointed out.

“It’s impressive,” Bruce said, and looked as if he meant it. Despite the grandiose size, it was reasonably tasteful, and thankfully didn’t include the new Avengers logo on any of the outbuildings. 

“Damn right. The labs are a handy jog from your quarters, Banner, so you can science away at any hour. I was going to put this whole complex plumb in the middle of the New York office, but then had some second thoughts. If someone decides to get cute and want some revenge, I’d rather not put Manhattan in the crossfire. Besides, the commute is nothing between Mjölnir, Iron Man, and the Quinjet.”

“Or your entire car collection,” Clint said, jerking his thumb back at the three fancy sports cars Tony had brought to the half-repaired Triskellion so they could drive up here.

“Oh sweet summer child, those are just the everyday workhorses,” Tony said, shaking his head in mock-despair. 

“What did you guys hear back from Asgard?” Natasha asked, before Tony could start waxing eloquent on his cars. She’d seen the list of vehicles somewhere in his file, and it was exhausting to read.

“Ah.” Thor’s expression softened from pride and glee at the new facility to something more meditative. “My brother was able to find where Killian and Ross had chosen to build their lesser children of the Destroyer, but with the Tesseract already connecting our worlds, it had created a dangerous aura as they fed off of its energy before plunging through to our world.” He looked away for a moment, jaw working, expression flickering over several emotions. “He offered Sif her spear back if she would fight to correct the damage she had caused. As Tony saw through the gate, she fought with everything she had. When Mjölnir hit the breech, it cut off the energy to the creatures. She was able to destroy them, at a cost. She was wounded, but not unto death. Even now, she recovers, if slowly. My brother greatly desires to speak with all of us again. I believe… given how I have managed to find a place on Midgard, he has been thinking we might have room for another.”

Natasha considered that, surprised, and looked over at the others.

“Being screwed over by people seems to be sort of a job requirement for this crew,” Clint pointed out. “Depends if she still hates your guts, Tony. Or ours.”

“Her hate is against those who betrayed her.”

“I’m open to the idea,” Bruce said. “But a lot depends on her. And if Director Hill minds another alien invasion. No offense, Thor.”

“None taken. We have time to consider and convince who and what we must, both here and on Asgard,” Thor said.

“Speaking of Asgard, my mentor, Fury, he had a thought everyone might like: send Killian and Ross to Asgard for their sentences. Keep them away from any allies left on Earth,” Steve said, arching an eyebrow.

“Perhaps. Or maybe my brother knows of a place even less hospitable. Hela has certain places in her realm for oathbreakers.”

“I’m sure the Director would approve of something to get those two out of the possibility of any latent Earth allies trying to get them free,” Steve said. 

“Then it’s really official? Those CNN reports weren’t just blowing smoke?” Bruce asked.

“The Army finished the last of their paperwork on Ross this morning. In addition to solitary at a super-max prison until the end of time, he’s dishonorably discharged,” Steve said with a small smile on his lips. “If that super-max happens to be out of this world, I doubt anyone’s going to object.”

“Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy,” Clint said, grinning.

“Killian got the same sentence. The U.S. government takes a dim view of treason, particularly not when they were abusing black-ops resources to boot. SHIELD’s going to be under heavy review while we track down exactly who Killian put under his mind-whammy.”

“Good,” Natasha said firmly. A little more oversight probably wouldn’t have prevented those two from acting on their ambitions, but it sure as hell would have slowed them down. Even so, she couldn’t blame SHIELD for not knowing about the personal beefs Ross and Killian had had towards Bruce and Tony, as they’d taken pains to conceal them. There were some things you couldn’t calculate for. She looked over at Tony and Thor as something else occurred to her. “I’m more worried about them blaming some alien artifact for their behavior. Overrunning D.C. with robots was dramatic, even for what I know of them.”

“They didn’t need Tesseract influence to develop sonic mind-control,” Tony said, crossing his arms. “Besides, if anyone is going to be able to detoxify their minds from anything the Tesseract suggested, it sure as Hel isn’t going to be anyone from Earth.”

“Let them try their games in Hela’s realm. She will humble them,” Thor said a smirk. “And once we are certain they are free from the Tesseract’s shadow, then perhaps they can return here for a most uncomfortable duration.”

“I’m all for it. And I’m pretty sure we’re having a party to celebrate, even if the only thing we have is music and whatever Tony has in the fridge,” Steve said.

Natasha favored Steve with a withering look. “If you think a Stark can’t whip up a blow-out extravaganza on no notice, then you’re a terrible spy.”

Tony was looking extravagantly gleeful, and everyone else started laughing. “Challenge accepted, Spy McGee.”

Thor laughed as he swept his arm back towards the cars. “Then let us ride, my friends. We have much to show you whilst Tony plans our revels.”

Natasha ended up with Steve in a fancy Mustang with exactly too much testosterone in its styling, but Steve seemed to like driving it. Ahead of them, the road curved and meandered to take full advantage of the scenery (and make tactical approach by ground entirely inadvisable). She approved whole-heartedly.

Natasha sat up straighter as the true scale of the Avengers’ complex became evident; this was more along the lines of a small village! All three cars pulled up at the entrance to the largest building, the front seemingly made from little more than glass and wire and light. Thor vaulted out of his car without the need to open the door, waving his hands and bowing to the others like he was welcoming them to Asgard. Tony was finishing up typing something on his phone, looking entirely too pleased with himself.

Clint bounded out of his car, Bruce following at a more sedate pace, and paused. He turned and waved Natasha and Steve up as Tony said something into thin air. The door opened as a crisp English accent said, “Welcome home, sir. The party will be starting shortly.” Steve chuckled slightly, and Bruce looked at him sideways.

“If that’s Stark’s home AI, I think I’m going to get locked into a few rooms.”

“I’ll bust you out of them,” Clint said breezily, slinging his arm around Steve and Natasha’s shoulders, Bruce leading the way as they walked up to join Tony and Thor.

“Welcome home, everyone,” Tony said with a smile. Thor grinned at everyone as they entered their new home together.


End file.
